'Once upon a time there was an ant who befriended a grasshopper. The ant was an industrious soul, working from sunup to sundown, along with thousands of his kin, hauling seeds and crumbs into the anthill. The grasshopper took a dim view of such labour. All the while that his little friend toiled, the grasshopper fiddled away on a grasshopper fiddle.

'You know,' the ant told him one day during his coffee break, 'your fiddle playing's nice, I mean that, but winter's coming and you should be storing away some food. Plan for your future!'

Th grasshopper just smiled and kept on playing his fiddle.

Still the ant slaved away, packing the anthill with tiny morsels to eat during the long hard winter to come. Still the grashopper fiddled and fiddled. Occasionally he bummed a crumb off his friend, the ant.

'I don't mean to be a pest,' the ant said to his friend, 'but you really should be thinking about this winter thing. You'll be hungry. It will be cold. Ice. Snow. The whole nine yards!'

But the grasshopper, either out of indifference or desire to bug his friend, only smiled and continued sawing away on his fiddle. He was pretty good at it.

Summer turned to autumn, and as the last leaf was falling off the trees, and a chill wind began to blow, the ant made one final appeal to the grasshopper.

'Lookit, there's still time,' he urged. 'There are still a few crumbs and morsels out there. Put in a little work now, and maybe, just maybe, you can scrape by through the winter. Now put down that fiddle already and do something!'

The grasshopper's smile faded. 'Put down my fiddle?' he said. 'Man, I'm going to Vegas. I got 12 weeks booked at Caesar's Palace, opening for Wayne Newton. I've been practising all summer. Put down my fiddle? Man, I thought you knew.'

And with that, the grasshopper packed up his fiddle and flew to Vegas and great acclaim and prosperity. But at least the ant could say, 'I knew that guy when he was bumming for crumbs.'

Moral: There are many different ways of being productive.'