The Raven Who Didn't Believe in Socialism

Once, there was a Raven who, having nothing better to do (since raven's are notoriously bad at sales and the health department frowns on having them work around food), spent her days stealing corn and cawing and then stealing more corn. The other birds of the forest looked at her and became concerned, knowing that she didn't have health insurance.

"Friend Raven!" the other birds shouted, as seen by the exclamation mark at the end of their dialogue. "We have decided to come together and form a health care collective that will allow us all to have access to affordable and quality health care. We would like you to join."

"What!" cawed the Raven, also in kind of a shout, "How dare you offend me with your socialist attitudes! Why would you think I would EVER want to be part of your anti-capitalist, leftist schemes! Why, I expect you would take my own beloved grandmother out to a field and kill her!"

The other birds, who were too kind to point out that Raven's grandmother had been dead for several years following a scarecrow induced heart attack, simply nodded their heads and went back to pecking the ground at random intervals in case there was food and picking fleas out from under their wings.

Later in the day, as Raven was stealing some corn, a farmer came out and shot at her. Now, the farmer, being nearsighted and a terrible shot anyway, didn't hit the crow, but, instead, sheared off the post that held up the farmer's scarecrow. The scarecrow tumbled forward, landing on Raven and crushing her hollow bird-bones in about eight-seven places. "Help!" cried the Raven, "I feel my bones have been broken in eight-seven places! Please, someone send a doctor!"

But, of course, Raven's insurance called "crushed by scarecrow" a pre-existing family-related illness and refused to pay anything toward it, despite the sky-high corn premiums Raven paid bimonthly. Because the insurance wouldn't pay, no doctor birds would touch her unless she paid in advance, and Raven, being a raven who had spent her days stealing corn and cawing and stealing more corn, had no money at all. (In fact, none of the birds had any money, since they were, after all, birds, and they were notoriously bad financial managers anyhow, but that we'll leave for another fable, such as "The Birds and the Sub-prime Loans".) And, because of this, Raven simply laid in the field and died a slow, painful death living in excruciating agony.

A few minutes before she died, a few other birds came by and said, "So now, friend Raven, how many more times would you caw and caw about government control and socialized medicine, having experienced our dysfunctional and classist health care system from the inside?"

And the Raven opened her mouth as if she was going to say something from night's Plutonian shore, but, instead, she died. And, while she died friendless and in hideously gut-wrenching pain, at least she didn't have socialized medicine.

Moral: Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"