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Once upon a time, there was a shepherd boy named Peter who was bored. All day long, he sat on a hill watching the village’s sheep.
To entertain himself, he took a deep breath and shouted, “The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming! The wolf is chasing the sheep.”
The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away, but when they reached the top of the hill, there was no wolf. The boy laughed when he saw their angry faces.
“Don’t cry wolf, shepherd boy, when there is no wolf,” and then the villagers angrily went back down the hill.
A little later, he cried out again, “The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming! The wolf is chasing the sheep.”
And to his great delight, he saw the villagers running up the hill to help him fight the wolf.
But when the villagers saw there was no wolf, they said, “Save your cry for when there really is something wrong. Don’t sing about a wolf when there is no wolf.”
But the boy just laughed as the villagers angrily went down the hill.
But later that same day, he saw a real wolf sneaking around his sheep. Frightened, he jumped up and shouted as loudly as he could, “The wolf is coming! The wolf is coming!”
But the villagers thought he was trying to trick them again, so they didn’t come.
At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy had not returned to the village with the sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy, and they found him crying.
“There really was a wolf here, and now all my sheep have scattered. I cried wolf, but why didn’t you come?”
An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village. “We will help you look for the sheep tomorrow, but shepherd boy, no one believes a liar, even when he tells the truth.”
