Once upon a time there was a farmer who kept geese and ducks and cows and magical horking creatures, all on his tiny farm. He was happy as a farmer, but did sometimes worry about his ability to make a living with such small stock.
Now, one day, he went about collecting eggs from as his geese as per usual, when he noticed something strange. Instead of an egg, one of his geese was sitting atop a scrap of paper with some writing on it. Now, the farmer couldn’t make any sense of this scrap of paper, so he took it to his good cow.
She put on her glasses, looked at the paper, and informed him that it was a stock option, and a rather good one at that. She recommended he sell it.
He did so, and was rewarded with quite a lot of money.
The same thing happened when he found another stock option under his goose, and then again, and again.
He started to wonder, sometimes in the long dark hours of night, and sometimes when he was performing simple tasks, like making jam out of the magical horking creature’s fur, just how much hypothetical money was in that goose.
I’m afraid to say he became rather greedy, and cut the goose open, hoping for all the other stock options to come right out.
But inside, there was no paper. Just goose insides. The goose, however, became very cross and nipped the farmer on the hand. After pulling herself together, she marched away from the farm and never came back.
The End.
Source: The Goose that Laid Golden Eggs, Aesop
