The Mice and the Elephants
Illustrated By: Sarah Frank
LONG AGO IN INDIA there was an old deserted village. Empty were the old houses, streets and shops. The windows were long broken, the stairs collapsed. Making it one very fine place for mice to run around, you can be sure! For hundreds of happy years the mice had made this deserted pile of rubble their home.
They built a wide network of tunnels, forming extensive mazes. What good times they had, coming and going, with their many dinner parties and festivals, weddings and feasts. And so time passed.
One day, a herd of elephants, numbering in the thousands, stamped through the village on their way to a big lake in the west.
All the elephants were thinking about as they marched was how good it would be to jump in that lake for a cool swim. They did not know that as they marched, those big elephant feet were stamping down on the web of mazes and tunnels the mice had painstakingly created over so many years. What a mess the elephants left behind!
The mice quickly held a meeting.
“If the herd comes back this way again, our community is doomed!” cried one mouse.
"We won't stand a chance!" cried another.
“If the herd comes back this way again, our community is doomed!" cried one mouse.
There was only one thing to do. A group of brave mice followed the elephant footprints all the way to the lake. There they found the King of the Elephants. Bowing before the King, one mouse spoke for the others and said, “O King, not far from here is our mice community. It’s in that old deserted village you passed through. You may remember it?”
“Of course I remember it,” said the Elephant King. “We are elephants. Elephants never forget. But we did not know a mice community was there.”
“How could you?” said the mouse.
“You did not know this, but your herd stamped out many of the homes where we have lived for hundreds of years. If you were to return the same way, that would surely be the end of us! We are small and you are big. We must ask you, please. Won’t you find another way to go home? Who knows, maybe someday we mice can help you, too.”
The Elephant King smiled. Imagine – how could tiny mice ever help an elephant?! But he felt sorry his herd had crushed the village of the mice, without even knowing it. He said, “There is no need for you to worry. I will lead the herd home in another way.”
Imagine - how could tiny mice ever help an elephant?
It so happens that nearby lived a certain King who ordered his hunters to trap as many elephants as they could. Knowing that the elephants came from far and wide to jump in the big lake to swim, the King's hunters made a trap in the water. As soon as the Elephant King and his herd jumped into that lake they were caught in the trap, one and all.
Two days later the hunters dragged the Elephant King and his herd out of the lake with large ropes and tied the elephants to big trees in the forest. When the hunters had gone, all the elephants looked to their King. The Elephant King tried desperately to think - what could they do?
The Elephant Kind tried desperately to think - what could they do?
All the elephants were tied to the trees but one elephant. The only reason she was free was because she did not jump in the lake.
The Elephant King called out to her. He told her that she must go back to the old deserted village and bring back the mice who lived there.
When the mice found out the trouble that the Elephant King and his herd were in, they raced over to the lake. Seeing the King and his herd tied up, they quickly ran over to the ropes and began chewing and fast and vigorously as they could.
Soon the ropes were chewed all the way through and the mice set their large friends free.
The elephant herd found a new way home and the mice community happily lived on for many years to come.
