 The moral lesson taught by these stories is summed up by the English proverb 'Once bitten, twice shy'.The episode of the rats holding a council is similar to the fable of The Mice in Council who suggested hanging a bell on the cat, but that only developed during the Middle Ages and has a completely different moral.The Phaedrus version of the fable is separately numbered 511 in the Perry Index and is prefaced by advice on the need to keep one's wits about one.