The merchant caged the parrot he prized — and caging it is what drove it away

A merchant kept a parrot in a cage. He was about to travel to Hindustan on business, and he asked the bird what gift or message it would have him send to its kinsmen there. The parrot asked only one thing: that he tell the wild parrots of India that it was kept confined in a cage.

In Hindustan the merchant found a flock of parrots and delivered the message. On hearing it, one of them fell down dead at once. When he came home he rebuked his own parrot for sending so fatal a message. But the caged bird, hearing the tale, immediately fell down dead in its cage.

The merchant lamented, took the small corpse out and threw it away — whereupon it recovered and flew off, free. The wild parrot of India had only feigned death, to show the caged one the way out of its cage. The merchant had prized the bird and kept it safe; the keeping was the cage, and the cage was what cost him the bird.