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Crow - Coyote's Strawberry
Out walking, Old Man Coyote spied a group of good-looking girls picking wild strawberries. "Ah, these pretty young things!" he said. Quickly he buried himself in the earth among some strawberry bushes and let only the tip of his manhood protrude.
Soon the girls came to those bushes. "There's a big berry here," said one girl, "different from the others." She tried to pluck it, but it wouldn't come loose. "This berry has deep roots," she said.
All the other girls came and tried to pick the strawberry. Some pulled at it, some nibbled at it. "Oh, my," said one, "this berry weeps." "No," said another girl, "it has milk in it." A third said: "Since we can't pick it, let's look for a sharp piece of flint and cut it off."
The girls searched and found a flint, but when they came back to the berry patch, the strange strawberry had disappeared. "It must have been some trick by that nasty Old Man Coyote," the girls said to each other. One said: "Yes, I'm sure it was Coyote. We'll have to get even."
One day the girls went to a place along the trail where Old Man Coyote always went hunting. They took their dresses off and smeared themselves with blood from some meat they had been given to cook. Looking as if they had been raped and slain by enemies, they lay there face down, naked, and bloody.
Pretty soon Old Man Coyote came along. When he saw the girls with blood all over them, he was scared. "Oh my, oh my! He said. "What enemy has done this? What shall I do? Maybe the enemy is still around and will come and kill me. Oh my! I must find out how long these girls have been dead. If their corpses are old, then surely the enemy is far away."
He bent down and started feeling and smelling the girls' bodies. Whenever he came near one of the girls' backsides, she farted right into Old Man Coyote's face. He said: "Oh my, I think I am safe. These girls must have been dead a long time, they smell bad!"
Then all the girls jumped up laughing, shouting: "Old Man, this time the joke was on you."
Crow Based on two stories told in 1899 and 1903.
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