Lessons In Reality: The Tortoise & The Hare - Remixed

The Tortoise & The Hare is a great children's story and contains a very worthwhile lesson for kids. However, tweak the conditions slightly and it's an entirely different ballgame.  Allow me to demonstrate with the following illustrations.

Excerpt from Chasing Tail (A Rhyming Picture Book)

Introduce a dose of reality (eg. a predator such as Scruffy McPaw above), and suddenly "slow and steady" becomes "slow and easily devoured".  It doesn't have to a predator of course.  Any form of time pressure will do.

Don't get me wrong, there's certainly a time and place for the "slow and steady" approach.  Anyone performing an operating on me in the future can take all the time they want.  But in most real world scenarios, time is precious and there are few managers I know who will buy into the premise of the original Tortoise & Hare tale.

So what age do you think is appropriate to remix this classic fable and start preparing your child for the real world?