A Mallard, eating everything, was chided by a Woodcock who ate special foods. They disagreed. The Duck then ate a hook and Woodcock flew into a net. Ooops.
Criticize at your own risk.
JBR Collection
A Woodcock and a Mallard were feeding together in some marshy ground at the back of a mill-pond. “Dear me,” said the squeamish Woodcock, “in what a voracious and beastly manner you devour all that comes before you! Neither snail, frog, toad, nor any kind of filth, can escape the fury of your enormous appetite. All alike goes down without measure and without distinction. What an odious vice is gluttony!” “Good lack [sic]!” replied the Mallard; “pray how came you to be my accuser? And whence has your excessive delicacy a right to censure my plain eating? Is it a crime to satisfy one’s hunger? or is it not, indeed, a virtue rather, to be pleased with the food which nature offers us? Surely, I would sooner be charged with gluttony, than with that finical and sickly appetite on which you are pleased to ground your superiority of taste. What a silly vice is daintiness!” Thus endeavouring to palliate their respective passions, our epicures parted, with a mutual contempt. The Mallard, hastening to devour some garbage, which was in reality a bait, immediately gorged a hook, through mere greediness and oversight; while the Woodcock, flying through a glade in order to seek his favourite fare, was entangled in a net spread across it for that purpose: falling each of them a sacrifice to their different, but equal, foibles.
