A Wolf falls into a trap and then howls which causes more Wolves to come into the trap. He doesn’t live to regret it.
L’Estrange version
There’s a story of a man of quality in Ireland, that a little before the troubles there, had wall’d in a piece of ground for a park, and left only one passage into’t by a gate with a porticullis to’t. The rebellion brake out, and put a stop to his design. The place was horribly pester’d with Wolves; and his people having taken one of ’em in a pit-fall, chain’d him up to a tree in the enclosure; and then planted themselves in a lodg over the gate, to see what would come on’t. The Wolf in a very short time fell a howling, and was answer’d by all his brethren thereabouts, that were within hearing of it; insomuch that the hububb was immediately put about from one mountain to another, till a whole herd of ’em were gotten together upon the outcry; and so troup’d away into the park. They were no sooner in the pound, but down goes the porticullis, and away scamper’d the Wolves to the gate, upopn the noise of the fall on’t. When they saw that there was no getting out again, where they came in, and that upon hunting the whole field over, there was no possbility of making an escape, they fell by consent upon the Wolf that drew them in, and tore him all to pieces.
Moral
Any Man that has but eyes in his head, and looks well about him, will find this exploit of the Wolves, to be no more then the common practice of the publik incendiaries on the other.
[Note: The word “troubles” has been used for conflict in Ireland for centuries. The use of Ireland in the fable may or may not have been something L’Estrange used as an example instead of a translated location known to Aesop. Either way this is unlikely to have been written by Aesop or any contemporary.]
