The Kalmyk fairy tale about the crow and the eagle is mentioned in Pushkin’s famous novel called The Captain’s Daughter. In the novel the rebel Emelyan Pugachev recounts this fairy tale that he heard from an old Kalmyk woman.One day the crow and the eagle meet each other. The eagle asks the crow why it lived for 300 years whereas the eagle itself lived for only 30 years. The crow replies, “I drink the blood of the dead, that is why I live 300 years”. The eagle proposes to the crow that they should swap their lives. The next day the eagle returns to the crow asking to return its life, “I’d rather drink warm blood for 30 years than feed on corpses for 300 years”.Ubush says that many Kalmyks have a similar mentality of preferring to have a quick and eventful life. Hence many Kalmyks like gambling and get easily bored from routine work.