One day, Jackal felt sick.

He tried drinking water, but that made his stomach swollen.

He tried eating grass, but still his stomach hurt.

Jackal decided that only the medicine of humans would help him.

So he dragged himself to the clinic in the town.

"Auwwwh," said the nurse when she saw the bedraggled jackal. "This place is for sick people, not animals. Go away!" she shouted. 

Now, Jackal was a clever animal, so as sick as he was, he made a plan.

He asked a boy who was waiting outside the clinic, to get him the medicine from the nurse.

"If you do this for me, I will give you a fresh fat bird every day," Jackal told the boy, whose name was Ernst.

Ernst was hungry and anyway, he felt sorry for the sick jackal, with his drooping whiskers and his tail hanging like a rag.

So Ernst went into the clinic, got the medicine, and gave it to the jackal. Jackal licked up all the medicine.

Immediately, Jackal's ears stood up and his tail lifted. Then he run away over the veld without even looking back at Ernst.

"Hey, what about my fresh fat bird?" Ernst shouted.

The jackal just ran away faster. That night Ernst and his parents slept with hunger.

But when they awoke the next morning, they found a fat sandgrouse on their doorstep.

And the next day too, and every day until the boy grew up.

Ernst never saw the jackal again.

He grew up to become an animal doctor, and kept a picture of a jackal on his wall.