For those not getting the reference http://www.gballard.net/lifes_lessons/girl_rattlesnake/

Or the Scorpion and the Frog [1]

[1] http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheScorpionandth...

I had only ever heard the scorpion version, never the snake. I MUCH prefer the scorpion version because it focuses on the scorpion and not the frog.

The scorpion dooms himself by his own nature, where as the girl is merely trusting and punished for it.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frog_and_the_Mouse , you can find each moral in Aesop, with the frog and the mouse teaching that evil destroys itself and the farmer and the viper teaching that you're a fool to hope for anything but evil treatment from evil. Presumably, you'd target the first lesson at people you wanted to shape up, and the second one at the excessively giving.

On a different note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog is only listed in WP's "apocryphal" subcategory of Aesop's fables, dated to 1954. What's it doing on "www.aesopfables.com"?

In the version told in the Star Trek: Voyager episode Scorpion, the girl is a fox and the snake is a scorpion (hence the show's title)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708968/quotes?item=qt0492714

While I understand the point of the fable, I don't get this version at all. Snakes don't rely on lures or deception; they sneak up on their small prey and try to keep out of the way of larger animals. I feel particularly well disposed towards rattlesnakes because they advertise that they don't want to be messed with. Rather like sharks, I feel like hey get a bad rap. Of course the author has rather obvious religious sensibilities, so perhaps that influences his perspective.

Don't be fooled; that story is many centuries old. Snakes are traditionally villainous because they can kill you; I doubt there was ever more to it.

Fun fact: monkeys have been observed to scream in fear on seeing a piece of rubber hose lying on the ground. There are good historical reasons for people to hate snakes.

Some of course prefer the Al Willson musical version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_ZBqpEUbik

Clasic Northern Soul

One slight detail from that page, for those whose remembrance of history is a little faulty:

   Benjamin Franklin (6th US president, inventor, 1706-1790)

Perhaps in an alternate universe?

江山易改秉性难移

Google translate says: Leopard change its mettle difficult to move

To a Chinese speaker: Is this a botched translation or is the parent's comment nonsense?

I assumed it might be "A leopard doesn't change its spots" and searching that got me here:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english-chinese-t...

(which matches the above characters)

Hard to see how that translation could have come about, since there is no reference to a leopard, or any animal, in the Chinese. The leopard can only be in there by reference to translations of the entire idiom as "a leopard can't change its spots", but then I'd expect google translate to just give you "a leopard can't change its spots".

The "mettle difficult to move" bit is a fairly direct translation of the last four characters. CC-CEDICT glosses this saying as "rivers and mountains are easy to change, man's character much harder", which again renders the characters fairly directly.