The Possible Bag

One of my favorite stories is "The Possible Bag." It contains humor, etiological elements, morality, and of course doing something one too many times that results in a catastrophe. Veeho, sets off to find a man who he has heard is never wanting of food but does not hunt. Veeho is already demonstrating a lack of work ethic and an interest in an easy way out which pretty much describes the motives of most of the tricksters. Once Veeho has found the man he is welcomed and invited to eat, at which Veeho gorges himself, further illustrating his incessant greed. Veeho then proceeds to wait until his host has fallen asleep and attempts to run off with his possible bag, which Veeho is enamored with.
Veeho failed at getting away, and his host was so gracious and trusting he believed Veeho's excuse for talking the bag. Veeho immediately started planning how to take the bag, and his overly trusting host confided in Veeho his only fear. Once again illustrating the lack of ethics and greedy nature of the trickster, Veeho takes advantage of his hosts trust and transforms himself into the hosts one fear, which happens to be a goose... Once securing the Bag from his host Veeho is told only to use it four times, which sounds way too familiar.
Veeho goes home and finds that the bag yields a buffalo every time he opens it. So Veho proceeds to feed his family with the buffalo that he gets from the bag and for the first four nights everything is great. But it is all short lived, and of course Veeho uses it more than four times which results in a stampede of buffalo coming from the bag and trampling his village.
The destroyed village prompts the villagers to look for the one responsible, which Veeho, being less than an upstanding guy denies avidly that he knows what happened. Unfortunately for Veeho, the people soon realize that the buffalo are a blessing and it is too late to for Veeho to take credit.
So the tales obvious etiological element is the reason that the world has buffalo. The moral implications of the story are that if Veho was honest he would have been credited for having given the world buffalo, but since this story exists he was anyways, which kind of defeats the moral... The tale also contains cunning on the part of the trickster, and of course the ability to transform into other things which seems to be a common ability of the trickster. I love this story because it is very much a trickster tale, their is cunning on the part of the trickster, a flaw which leads to not being credited, and an explanation of buffalo exist.