The Crow and the Vulture's Color

In the beginning, all birds were a plain, dusty brown. The Crow and the Vulture were friends. The Crow, who was very clever and an expert with pigments, made a beautiful, glossy black paint for himself. "Now I will paint you," he told the Vulture. "But you must sit perfectly still." As the Crow was applying the beautiful black paint to the Vulture's feathers, the Vulture, who was impatient, began to fidget. He complained that the paint was cold and ticklish. In his fidgeting, he knocked over the pot of black paint. It splashed all over the Crow's head and neck, but there was none left for the Vulture's body. Then the Vulture accidentally kicked over a pot of white ash from the fire, which dusted his legs and underbelly. The Crow, angered by his friend's impatience, refused to make more paint. And so, the Crow remains a perfect, glossy black, while the Vulture is left with a messy, patchy coat of brown and black with ashy-white legs—a permanent mark of his impatience and inability to sit still for a blessing.