Once upon a time there was a Kalmyk man who lived by a dried up well. He had an old cow that had stopped giving milk. One day the old cow fell into the well. Since he was thinking of digging a new well and buying a young cow, the man decided to use the opportunity and bury the old cow alive. As he was filling the well with earth, the cow mooed vigorously. At some point it stopped mooing. The man thought it must have already died. All of a sudden, the cow jumped up out of the well and landed near the man. Invigorated, the cow shook the earth off its back while angrily stamping the ground with its hooves. A moral of this Kalmyk tale is that those who struggle to the end can get themselves out of any predicament no matter how impossible it may seem.