A flock of wild geese lived in a tall tree at the edge of a forest. Every morning they flew out to feed. Every evening they came back to the same branches. The oldest goose among them could no longer fly far, and the young birds had stopped listening to him for that reason.

One morning he found a thin green shoot at the base of the trunk. He called the young geese down and asked them to bite it off while it was still soft. They looked at it. It was a wisp of a thing, thinner than a feather shaft. They told him they would get to it.

The shoot thickened. It climbed. Weeks passed and it wound around the trunk in a rope thick enough to hold a man's weight. The old goose asked again. They gave him the same answer.

A hunter came through that part of the forest, saw the tree, and saw a ladder. He climbed the creeper to the branches and threw his net over the whole flock.