The Flower’s Choice
beauty in the glow of the noon-day sun. Deer would wander nearby in the edge of the trees, wary, yet lovely. Rabbits would hop by, and every now and then one of them would stop to sniff her fragrance. Their pink noises made her giggle, and she was always happy to see them come, and even still happy as they hopped off into the distance.
Can flowers smile and giggle? She did, quite regularly. You or I would never see it, mostly because we humans are very busy, and don’t pay very close attention to small things and small sounds. And the giggle of a flower is indeed a very small sound.
Things had always been this way, and as far as she was concerned, could stay that way forever. But in the back of her mind, she had always known that it was possible that she could one day be what the older flowers called “picked.” Her Grandma Rose had warned her of it, as had her Grandpa, Dan D. Lion.
“It’s very painful,” they said, “and the only reason people do it is so they can take you home, put you in a vase, and admire your beauty for a while. If anyone ever tries to pick you, get as stiff and prickly as you can, and hold on for dear root!”
One day, though, flower asked a question of them.
“Is it really so bad to be picked? After all, noone out here will ever know how pretty we look, and how sweet we smell!” If you have never heard all of the foliage in a field gasp at the same time, let me assure you that it is quite amazing. It sounds much like a wind rushing through in a hurry to go nowhere important.
And the field, at the moment of flower’s comment, gasped in the most audible manner.
“Why child,” intoned a fern in the shade of a nearby tree, “To be picked means that you will only live for a few more days, instead of several weeks!”
“Furthermore,” came the deep bass voice of a low crawling vine, “You will be surrounded by human children and their dirty little fingers, rather than by all of the clean plants of the field!”
“Let’s hear no more talk of such nonsense, young lady,” said Grandma Rose, “You just do as you are told, and you will get to live days and days longer out here in the field.”