A Remedy Worse Than the Disease

A flock of herons nested in a fig tree, unaware that a black snake living in a hole in the same tree had been steadily eating the heron chicks before they could even grow their flight feathers.

One grieving heron, having lost his own young and those of his relatives, went to a nearby pond in tears and was noticed by a crab, who asked what troubled him. The heron explained his sorrow and asked if there was any way to be rid of the snake.

The crab, reflecting privately that herons were natural predators of his own kind and that this presented an opportunity to eliminate more of them under the guise of helpful advice, offered a plan dressed as sound counsel: scatter bits of fish along a trail leading from a mongoose's burrow to the snake's hole, so the mongoose would follow the trail and kill the snake.

The heron followed this advice exactly, and the mongoose did indeed follow the trail of fish and kill the snake as predicted -- but having reached the base of the tree and developed a taste for the area, the mongoose then climbed up and, at his leisure, ate every heron nesting there as well.

The tale is remembered as a caution about accepting advice from someone with an unexamined interest in your destruction: a solution that solves the stated problem may still be constructed by someone who benefits from a much larger disaster following right behind it.