his back across a river. "Are you mad?" exclaimed the turtle. "You'll
sting me while I'm swimming and I'll drown."
"My dear turtle," laughed the scorpion, "if I were to sting you, you
would drown and I would go down with you. Now where is the logic in
that?"
"You're right?" cried the turtle. "Hop on!" The scorpion climbed aboard
and halfway across the river gave the turtle a mighty sting. As they
both sank to the bottom, the turtle resignedly said:
"Do you mind if I ask you something? You said there'd be no logic in
your stinging me. Why did you do it?"
"It has nothing to do with logic," the drowning scorpion sadly replied.
"It's just in my nature."
In the last trembling moments of the turtle's existence, its life starts to
play back like a movie in fast-forward. As the movie reaches its last
frame, it freezes on the old adage "to try is to fail - not to try is to
surrender" as the river swallows both of them in an inevitable act of
nature and the soul of the turtle rejoins its creator.
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