The Camel Who Wanted Horns

A camel, admiring a bull's magnificent curved horns from a distance, grew deeply envious and prayed earnestly to the forest god for a pair of his own, certain that horns would finally make him look as impressive and formidable as the bull always did.

The forest god, amused by such a request from a creature never meant to carry them, decided to teach the camel a lesson rather than simply refuse. Instead of horns, he took away the camel's fine, long ears as punishment for his ungrateful vanity, leaving him with neither the horns he wanted nor the ears he'd once had, making him look stranger and less impressive than ever.

The camel, humiliated and now permanently marked by his own greed, understood too late that he had been perfectly suited to his own nature all along, and that envying another creature's gifts — gifts that would never have fit his own body or purpose regardless — had cost him something genuinely his to lose.