c


  

c  
 



Once upon a time, there was a sad elephant. He was dirty and stinky, because he could not reach to
wash his back. All the other animals didn¶t play with him because he was smelly.

Elephant sat under a tree, where nobody could see him. He started to cry. His head was hanging down,
crying big tears. He sat and cried for days. One day, when his tears had dried up, he went to itch his
head and he felt a bump on his back. Then he noticed his nose had stretched because it had got wet
with all the crying and it was now a long trunk which had hit him on his back.

He went to the river and got his trunk, put it in the water and sucked the water up. Then he sprayed his
back with water.

All the other animals came over to him and said ³you are so
clean and smell so lovely. Do you want to play with us?´

The elephant was so happy and said ³yes.´

The End.

ccc !c"# $

One night in the Zoo when the keepers were asleep the other a nimals were
awakened by the chattering in the monkey cage.

³I have heard that Mr. Lion can be made very tame,´ said Jocko, ³and while I doubt very much if he really can bite, his growl is
most unpleasant to hear.´

³Oh, well, it may be worse than his bite ,´ said Tito. ³Those who make the most noise are not always to be feared, I have been
told.

³There is Hippo; he is much bigger than Mr. Lion, and he doesn¶t make as much noise all the time as Mr. Lion.´

³Oh, dear me, but what a big mouth Hippo has!´ laug hed Tito. ³I wonder how he happened to get such a big one. He must have
been the first one there when they gave out mouths.´

³I have heard something about almost every animal here,´ said Jocko. ³Want to hear it?´

³Yes, tell me,´ said Tito, moving close t o Jocko. ³Where did Mr. Lion get his long hair?´

³Oh dear! don¶t you know?´ laughed Jocko, ³Mrs. Lion pulled it so much it made it long. She hasn¶t any, you see. Oh dear, yes ,
Mr. Lion is a henpecked husband if ever there was one.´

³You don¶t tell me so, ´ said Tito. ³What about Hippo? How did it happen he is so big and clumsy?´

³Oh, don¶ t you know ?´ said Jacko. ³When the animals were being made there was a lot of each animal left and it was all stir red
together, and that made Hippo. They made his body first and then they did not have enough to give him a long tail or fill in his
mouth. That is the reason it is so large.´

³Ho, ho, ho!´ laughed Tito, and Jocko laughed, too, until they nearly fell off the place where they were sitting.

³Where did old Reynard get his bushy tail, Jocko?´

³Oh, don¶t you know that either?´ replied Jocko. ³He was caught trying to steal chickens by the farmer¶s wife, and she threw the
brush she was using at him with such force that it struck him handle first, and there it stuc k right on his back, and he never could
be rid of it.´

³Ho, ho, ho!´ laughed Tito. ³And where did the giraffe get his long neck?´

³Oh, that is easy,´ said Jocko. ³He was so big -feeling and so haughty he would not look at the other animals, and it stretch ed his
neck until now he can¶t see the ground, so I have been told. I don¶t know, of course.´

³He has a very little head, anyway,´ said Tito.

³There is very little in it, my dear Tito,´ said Jocko. And then they both laughed again.

One by one the animals had awakened, but, hearing what was being said, they each hoped to hear something about the other that
would offset the fun Jocko was making of them, so they kept still.

³Where did the elephant get his trunk? That is what I should m ost like to hear about,´ said Tito.

³Well, that is a long story,´ said Jocko. ³It seems that it really was only a nose to begin with, and not much of a nose at t hat, so I
have heard it said, but because he was so big he thought he was the boss of the jung le, where he lived, and he went about poking
his nose into every place he could find to see what was going on. They used to call him Old Nosey, I have been told, and he h ad
such big ears that what he did not see he heard, so every one disliked him, but it took Old Man Crocodile to cure him of his bad
habit.´

³What did he do to Mr. Elephant?´ asked Tito, excitedly.

³I¶ll tell you,´ said Jocko. ³One day Mr. Elephant was walking by the water when he saw something queer -looking sticking out
of the water.

³Mr. Elephant had to know what it was, so he poked it with his nose, and, zip! it had him right by the nose, and held him, too.

³My, how he did yell, I was told, but Old Man Crocodile would not let go. He held right on tight.

³Mr. Elephant pulled and cried, µLet go!¶ and the harder he pulled the harder Old Man Crocodile pulled, until Mr. Elephant had
that nose you see on him now called a trunk.

³By and by Old Man Crocodile had to catch his breath, and he let go, and down sat Mr. Elephant on the ground with a bang.

³Old Man Crocodile began to cry and say how sorry he was that he had grabbled Mr. Elephant ²that he had no idea he was
hurting a friend. He thought it was a hunter, and would Mr. Elephant please forgive him this once! ²he would never do it again.´

³Is there where Old Man Crocodile got his tears?´ asked Tito.

³That is how he began to cry,´ said Jocko.

³Ho, ho, ho!´ they both laughed, and then a terrible roar and trumpeting and all sorts of cries went up from the animals, for Mr.
Elephant could not keep quiet when he heard what Jocko said about his trunk.

When Mr. Elephant began to trumpet Mr. Lion began to roar, and Jocko and Tito fled to the back of their cage and huddled
together, trembling with fright.

³They can¶t get us,´ said Jocko. ³Let them talk and scream. I guess we woke them up talking and laughing.´

The other animals made such a noise that the keepers came running to see what had happened, but, of course, they did not
understand a thing they told them about the awful stories Jocko had t old about them, and so all they could do was to give them a
drink of water or a biscuit, hoping they would be quiet. Far into the morning the animals scolded and told Jocko what they
thought of him, but Tito and Jocko fell asleep in spite of the noise and Tito laughed in his dreams about the funny things Jocko
had told him.

c

    
R

 

The Warthog used to have beautiful long ivory tusks, but his friend, the Elephant, only had small,
curling tusks. Elephant was extremely jealous of his friend's tusks, and wanted the tusks for himself.

One day, Elephant saw Warthog out walking, and had an idea.

"Oh, Warthog," said Elephant, "I have such a problem. I have been invited to a ball this evening, and I
am worried that my little tu sks will not be grand enough. Can I borrow your wonderful tusks just for
tonight, and I will return them to you tomorrow morning?"

Of course, the trusting Warthog agreed to this, and the 2 swapped tusks.

However, when the next morning came, there was no sight of Elephant, and Warthog realised that he
had been tricked.

Warthog rushed to find his other friend, the Pangolin. "Don't worry," said the Pangolin. "Now you
have smaller tusks, you can live with me in my burrow and always feel safe. And Elephant will be
hunted for those tusks, and will never find a safe home to hide in again."

And to this day, Warthogs still live safely in burrows away from predators, and the Elephant is still
being hunted for his magnificent ivory tusks.

One day, it came across a gigantic block of ice. The pig had never seen the ice before and thought it
might contain food. As usual it was nose first. As his nose touched the ice it got stuck.

He tried to pull himself free but failed. In desperation, he used his ears to push but those were also
stuck. As he continued pulling, his ears became longer. The same happened to his nose. He also tried
pushing with his teeth. As he pushed, two of them started growing longer and became a tusk.

He was stuck for many weeks, standing out in the open exposed to the sun. His skin turned bright red
then grey.

Finally the snow melted. By that time he was famished. He started eating everything he could
find. As his size grew, his legs also started growing in size and height. Slowly, he changed and started
take the appearance what is now known as elephants.

ð

  

 
  
  
   




   


   
  
 
 
   
  

     


      


  
  
   
 
 
    
       

  
   
   
 

     


    


     





   


 
   

        
       
 

!  " 
    
#!      

  $   
  % 
      
         
    
  
   
  

&
   

      
  
 
 

  



'(   )'   



'()'
   

'!    
 

 
   ' 





'

'  *  

'!     #'   

'+
 '

', #'   '!   
#'

' +  #'

', #+ 
   #'

'+(-,!!.###'    



-   
   

!  
   


       


'(
 )'          

    

$ 
   


   
     



',/#'   '0   
 
    

 #, 
 
#'

  
   


     




  
 #

!
  
    

    
   
 !  
   
      

(   

 
 
   
 
 

  
     
  
    




   - -
 - - 
, 
-  
$ -  

! 

 

        
  

   
   1
       

     

!  


         

     
 
 
   !        
 

!    

  
       

What Happened To The Elephants?

By: Adrian Barnett

Once upon a time, in a country not very far away, called Africa, there were herds of enormous animals
called Elephants. Elephants were very very big. They were grey, had four legs and thick leathery skin
like the bark of a tree. They had large ears they could flap to keep cool, two huge teeth sticking out of
their mouths, which were called tusks, each one could be as long as you are tall. The tusks were made
out of a type of bone called ivory.

Best of all, elephants had trunks. The elephants trunk was just it's nose, but it was long and strong and
bendable, and the elephant used it's trunk like an arm. It could pick food up to eat, or reach up into the
trees for juicy leaves with it's trunk. The tip of the tru nk was as delicate and sensitive as your fingers,
and it could use it much like you use for hand. There are some other creatures that have a sort of trunk,
but none are as useful as that of the elephant.

Now, the elephants lived a peaceful life, wandering about the open plains, and through the bushes.
They could push down large trees if they wanted, as they were very strong. Not many animals bothered
them, as they were the biggest of all the animals. Then one day, some people discovered that elephant
tusks, made of ivory, were good for carving into pretty ornaments and jewelry, and started gathering
bits of broken tusks, or tusks from dead elephants, and carefully making pretty things from them.

After a while, people from far away countries discovered these ivory carvings and thought that they
were very beautiful, because they were. More and more people wanted to buy ivory carvings, which
meant that they needed more tusks to get the ivory. So they decided that the elephants' ivory tusks were
more important than the elephants that owned the tusks. They started to go to Africa to find elephants.
When they found the elephants they killed them. They killed the elephants to take their ivory tusks
away to make into pretty ornaments.

Elephants only grow tusks when they are old, baby elephants don't have tusks, just like our babies don't
have teeth at first. This meant that the ivory collectors only killed the grown -up elephants, and the
young elephants were left alone. Without grown-ups to look after them, the young elephants would die,
either because they couldn't find food, or because they had no protection from lions and hyenas, and all
the other things that like to eat baby elephants.

This didn't really matter much to start with ( except to the elephants, who di dn't like it much ), as there
were so many elephants tromping about, eating leaves and knocking down trees and drinking from
rivers. But as the years went by, the numbers of elephants became less and less, because grown -up
elephants were killed for their tusks, and baby elephants died because they were on their own, so they
didn't grow up to have baby elephants themselves. Because there were less elephants about, that meant
there was less ivory to make things from, and so it cost more and more to buy ivory as it became more
and more rare. This meant that the people killing the elephants got richer and richer, and so they
wanted even more ivory so that they would get more money, and so they started killing even more
elephants for the ivory in their tusks.

When elephants found the dry, white bones of other elephants, they would pick them up carefully with
their trunks and look at them. They knew that the bones were elephant bones. Some were the bones of
grown-up elephants, and some were the bones of baby elephants. Sometimes they took the bones away
into the trees. If they found tusks that the hunters had left behind, the elephants would take the big
tusks and smash them hard against the ground to break them.

And so it went on. The less ivory there was, the more money the hunters got for it, and the more money
they got, the more they wanted to kill elephants to get ivory. The elephants were killed until none were
left. There were still some elephants in zoos, but they weren't very happy elephants, as they couldn't
wander about for miles and miles, knocking things over and eating leaves, which is what they liked
best, and so not many baby elephants were born. As the zoo elephants got old, they died, until only one
elephant was left, in just one zoo. The last elephant in the world. Boys and girls came to see the last
elephant, to look at it's trunk and it's tusks and it's big floppy ears. The elephant was sad because it was
all alone. It had people friends, but no elephant friends. When it got old it died and then th ere were no
more elephants ever again.

The people who had killed the elephants didn't mind, because they had all the money they made from
selling ivory, and the people who bought the tusks didn't mind, because they had pretty things made
from ivory to wear and look at and show to their friends. The elephants were killed until none were
left.