A Wolf found a Dog napping outside. Wolf caught Dog but Dog talked Wolf out of a meal saying he’d be fatter after a wedding and would give up then. Didn’t!
Take the meal at hand instead of waiting for better.
Aesop For Children (The Wolf and The Lean Dog)
A Wolf prowling near a village one evening met a Dog. It happened to be a very lean and bony Dog, and Master Wolf would have turned up his nose at such meager fare had he not been more hungry than usual. So he began to edge toward the Dog, while the Dog backed away.
“Let me remind your lordship,” said the Dog, his words interrupted now and then as he dodged a snap of the Wolf’s teeth, “how unpleasant it would be to eat me now. Look at my ribs. I am nothing but skin and bone. But let me tell you something in private. In a few days my master will give a wedding feast for his only daughter. You can guess how fine and fat I will grow on the scraps from the table. Then is the time to eat me.”
The Wolf could not help thinking how nice it would be to have a fine fat Dog to eat instead of the scrawny object before him. So he went away pulling in his belt and promising to return.
Some days later the Wolf came back for the promised feast. He found the Dog in his master’s yard, and asked him to come out and be eaten.
“Sir,” said the Dog, with a grin, “I shall be delighted to have you eat me. I’ll be out as soon as the porter opens the door.”
But the “porter” was a huge Dog whom the Wolf knew by painful experience to be very unkind toward wolves. So he decided not to wait and made off as fast as his legs could carry him.
Moral
Do not depend on the promises of those whose interest it is to deceive you.
Take what you can get when you can get it.
L’Estrange version
A wolfe took a dog napping at his master’s door, and when he was just about to worry him, the poor creature begg’d hard, only for a reprieve. Alas (says he) I’m as lean at present as carryon; but we have a wedding at our house within these two or three days, that will plump me up you shall see with good cheare. Pray have but patience ’till then, and when I’m in a little better case, I’ll throw my self in the very mouth of ye. The wolfe tooke his word, and so let him go; but passing some few days after by the same house again, he spy’d the dog in the hall, and bad him remember his promise. Heark ye, my friend, says the dog; whenever you catch me asleep again, on the wrong side of the door, never trouble your head to wait for a wedding.
Moral
Experience works upon many brutes more then upon some men. They are not to be gutted twice with the same trick; and at the worst, a bad shift is better than none.
Gherardo Image from 1480
Canis Dormiens et Lupus
Canis ante stabulum quoddam dormiebat. Quem cum lupus conspexisset, haud mora eum voraturus accurrit. Canis autem ne ab eo mactaretur obsecrabat, aiens, “Nunc quidem, here mi, ne me comedas, quaeso; sum enim macer, exilis, atque mendicus. Quin potius paulisper exspecta, mei enim domini sunt nuptias facturi. Proinde si nunc me dimiseris, postquam largius pastus ero, pinguior quoque fiam, melioremque cibum parabo tibi.” His ille verbis inductus, canem reliquit. Nonnullis autem transactis diebus, lupus reversus cum canem perquireret, eum supra domum dormientem invenit. Stans itaque inferius ipsum vocabat ac pacta conventa commemorabat. Ei vero canis respondens, “O lupe,” ait, “si me posthac ante stabulum dormientem adspexeris, ne nuptias amplius exspectes.”
Perry #134