# The Lion and the Mouse

_Aesop_ · 2 min read · ages 4-9

A lion wakes to find a mouse running over his face, and he laughs so hard at her promise to repay him one day that he lets her go. When hunters’ ropes catch him soon after, the mouse hears his roars, comes running and gnaws him free.

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A lion lay asleep in his den until a mouse ran across his face and woke him. In a temper he pinned her under one great paw and made ready to kill her.

Terrified, the mouse begged him for her life.

“Please let me go,” she cried, “and one day I will repay your kindness.”

The lion laughed out loud at the thought that so small a creature could ever do anything for him, and, still laughing, he lifted his paw and let her go.

But the mouse’s chance came after all. One day the lion was caught in a net that hunters had spread for game, and the more he struggled, the tighter it held him. The mouse heard his angry roars, knew them at once, and came running.

Without wasting a moment she set to work with her small sharp teeth, gnawing through one rope and then another, and before long the lion was free.

“There,” said the mouse. “You laughed at me when I promised to repay you. Now you see that even a mouse can help a lion.”

**Moral:** A kindness costs little at the time and can come back when you need it most.

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- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-lion-and-the-mouse
- Source: Aesop's Fables: a new translation, tr. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11339)
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Aesop's Fables: a new translation, tr. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912) — translation: author died 564 BC (+70 passed); translator V. S. Vernon Jones died 1955 (+70 passed)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)