Aesop's Fables

The Dog and the Shadow

A DOG, crossing a bridge over a stream with a piece of flesh in
his mouth, saw his own shadow in the water and took it for that
of another Dog, with a piece of meat double his own in size.  He
immediately let go of his own, and fiercely attacked the other
Dog to get his larger piece from him.  He thus lost both:  that
which he grasped at in the water, because it was a shadow; and
his own, because the stream swept it away.