A magpie built her nest from twigs she’d gathered everywhere: a jay’s discarded ribbon, a squirrel’s forgotten thread, a sparrow’s clever weave copied stitch for stitch. She never invented a single pattern. She simply watched the forest, took what worked, and built faster than anyone else could manage.
The other birds grumbled but let it pass. Her nests were sturdy. Her prices were fair. Business is business in the woods.
Then one spring, a crow built a nest strikingly similar to her own. The magpie was outraged. She perched on the highest branch and screeched to anyone who’d listen: theft, she called it. Shameless copying. A disgrace to honest birds everywhere.
The forest fell quiet. Then the owl, who misses nothing, spoke from her hollow.
“You are aggrieved,” she said, “that someone finally did to you what you have done to everyone else.”
The magpie had no answer. She flew off in a temper, and built her next nest exactly as she always had.
Moral: The thief who shouts loudest about being robbed has usually just met his own reflection.
Anyone following industry LinkedIn posts last week will know exactly what this is about.
