A long time ago, there was a huge banyan tree that stood at the outskirts of a small village. Many kinds of birds had their nests on this tree. Travellers, too, used to stop by for rest under the tree’s shade.
One day, a fowler happened to come to the tree. He saw that many types of birds lived there. So, he set up his net below the tree and scattered a few grains of rice to attract the birds there. But, a crow who lived on the tree had seen the hunter setting up the net and warned the other birds not to go down to eat the grains.
But, at the same time, a flock of doves were flying past the banyan tree. They saw the grains of rice scattered around the tree and went down to eat them. Suddenly, a huge net fell over them and trapped them. They struggled to get out of it but couldn’t. They could see the fowler walking towards them looking delighted at having caught so many doves.

The doves were distressed and thought that their end was near. But the king of the doves was very wise. He thought of a plan and said, “We must do something very quickly to free ourselves. We should all fly up carrying the net with us. Once we manage to get away from the fowler, we can think of what to do next. So, let’s fly now.”
The doves listened to their king’s advice. Each dove held a part of the huge net in his beak and all of them flew up together. The fowler was amazed to see this happening. He had never expected that such a thing could happen. He ran after the flock of doves but they flew much faster than him. Soon, they had come a good distance away from him and they saw that he had given up the chase.

Then the king spoke to the doves, “You all did very well. Now, our next task is to free ourselves from this net. I know a mouse who lives not very far from here. He is a good friend of mine and he will surely help us.” So, they went to meet the mouse.

On reaching the mouse’s hole, the king dove said, “Dear mouse, I am your friend, the king dove. We are in great difficulty and we nee