The Tale of Newt and Toad

An allegory

There was a pond; a beautiful pond. Swans would glide and ducks would land and darling little ducklings would trail behind their mama. It was the best pond anywhere to bring up ducklings, no doubt about it.

On the edge of the pond dwelled toads and frogs and lizards and newts lying in the warm squelching mud, making their odd sounds to one another.

And there was a newt called Newt who was not anything special as newts go except that he had a thing for making wild predictions and being snide about the swans and the ducks and their ducklings and the absolutely appalling state of the pond.

The other mud creatures would listen, enthralled, to his wild doom-laden predictions such as: 

By the end of the summer this pond will be so full of swan shit you won’t be able to swim in it 

and

By the end of winter the water will be frozen over solid and these ludicrous swans don’t have any clue how to stop it from happening.

And even though winter would come to an end and there would be no ice, 

and even though summer would pass without the water ever thickening up with shit,

 creatures went on listening to him because by the time summer had ended they would have forgotten what he had been saying at the start of it. 

And anyway, he would have moved on to something new like:

most of you don't have any food, you just don't know it yet

But Newt grew tired of just making snide digs at the Queen Swan out in the middle of the lake being all regal and so one day he said to his friend Toad: 

I’ve got a brilliant plan. Just follow my lead.

So Toad hopped onto Newt’s back and out they swam out to the middle of the lake.

Newt whispered to Toad, tell them this: “I’m here to make this a better pond to bring up ducklings going forward”

And Toad croaked out Newt’s message. And all the creatures turned and looked and listened as Newt whispered to Toad what to say next, and Toad droned and stuttered.

At first the creatures listened politely. But after a couple of minutes the murmuring began.

And in a few more minutes people were laughing at what Toad was saying.

And in a few more minutes a hush fell upon the pond as the creatures looked at one another and said WTF is this toad for real?

And Toad looked around at the creatures gaping at him and said,

 fuck this, you’re on your own Newt

and hopped away. 

Newt said, whatever LOL hey Frog, do you want to hop on my back and we can talk about taking the pond back from this lot?

But Frog said, yeah nah I think I’ll  do it myself you can go back to the mud and spend more  time with your family.

So Newt slunk back to the water's edge. And the creatures murmured amongst themselves whispering and giggling and pointing at Newt.

But after a few minutes Newt cleared his throat again and said: 

get a load of Swan acting all regal honestly who does that why is she treating us like  halfwits she won’t last long tell you what etc.

And everything went back to the way it was. Because every pond has a swan in the middle looking regal and pedalling flat out underneath. 

And every pond has a bunch of toads and the lizards at edge sitting in the mud and watching, saying who does she think she is? Honestly.