Priest: Why are you crying son?
Tortoise: Father , I am a sinner
Priest: No , Son , you are a winner. You won the race.
Tortoise: No father , I am a sinner
Priest: You beat that hare against such heavy odds. I must insist you are a WINNER.
Tortoise: I didn't want to run the race.
Priest: Son , but you did and we are glad that you did. The hare was so full of himself. Now see he ran off, he didn't even bother to come to the congratulate you.
Tortoise: He didn't come because he can't.
Priest: Ohh yes I heard the cops have filed a MISSING Report on him.
Tortoise: My father was a car salesman and he used to visit places.
Priest: Yes. Go On.
Tortoise: My father was a nudists and so occasionally used to come out of the shell. After the death of my mother he fancied on my neighbor and so he used to come out of shell whenever she is around. But he didn't know that the eagle is also watching him.. So once one day when he slipped out of his shell the eagle took ..
Priest: Enough. Why do you want to tell all this? This is celebration time ..
Tortoise: After my father died I was in grief and to add to my gried this hare came. I don't know from where and he claimed to be my brother. He said that my father was his father too. He showed me some photos of him , his mother who was a hare and my father , but I didn't believe him ..
Priest: No one did ..
Tortoise: He showed the will signed by my father and my house was his in it ..
Priest: Yes I saw it ..
Tortoise: I told him I will take him to court and he said that real men fight it out. As both of us are timid
we decided upon a race..
Priest: What made you agree to a race?
Tortoise: I was drunk ..
Priest: So then what happened?
Tortoise: My friend Jacob ..
Priest: That Snake.. you should not hang around, he was just sneaky
Tortoise: The snake told me he will take care of the hare and I would win ..
Priest: I am all ears ..
Tortoise: I thought that the snake will frighten the hare or tie him up..
Priest: So what did the snake do ..
Tortoise: He swallowed the hare..
Priest: What?
Tortoise: The hare became confident and when he saw me behind he took a nap below a tree. The snake went to tie him up but just swallowed him.
Priest: That is why there is no dead body even if he is dead.
Tortoise: So I won the race and the snake never told me how he managed to keep the hare away from winning. But I saw the snake frigthened after that and one day when the snake was drunk I asked him as to what is bothering. He told me that he ate the hare and now he seeing the ghost of the hare everywhere ..
Priest: What did you do then?
Tortoise: Before I could react .. the snake had committed suicide by hanging from the tree.
Priest: So ..
Tortoise: Now I see the ghost too.. please make it go away.
Priest (comes out of the confession box): Get up tortoise..
Tortoise: Sheriff..
Priest: Yes , your snake tried to commit suicide but stopped him from doing so. He confessed to everything and we wanted to check whether you are also inovlved..
Tortoise: So the ghost ..
Priest: It is not difficult to find similar looking hare. We told another hare to act like ghost and frighten the snake ..
Tortoise: But how did you know that the snake did something ..
Priest: OK!! the snake told every one in the forest when he was drunk that he swalloed the hare and the tortoise is a looser !!
