James Baquet

British Indian author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote “The Jungle Book,” also wrote a collection of “Just So Stories” explaining (humorously) why certain things are the way they are. “The Elephant’s Child” tells how the elephant got its trunk.

“In the high and far-off times,” the story begins, the elephant had no trunk, just a bulgy nose as big as a boot. And the curious Elephant’s Child came to wonder: What do crocodiles have for dinner? When he asked, all the adults said, “Hush!” and spanked him for his insatiable curiosity.

Only the Kolokolo Bird suggested, “Go to the banks of the great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.”

And so he did, taking along with him bananas, sugar-cane, and melons. As he went, he ate the melons, throwing the rinds on the ground.

When he reached the banks of the river, he realized that he didn’t know what a crocodile looked like! So he asked a Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake some questions — and got spanked for doing so. As he walked away he stepped on a log of wood at the river’s edge, or so he thought.

But it was really the Crocodile, who winked one eye, then the other, as the Elephant’s Child asked if he’d seen the Crocodile! “Come closer,” said the Crocodile, “for I am the Crocodile.”

When the Elephant’s Child asked what he had for dinner, the Crocodile asked him to come closer still, then caught the Elephant’s Child by its little boot-like nose and said, “I think today I will begin with Elephant’s Child!”

As the Crocodile pulled, the Elephant’s Child pulled back, until at last he escaped, through the Bi-Colored-Python-Rock-Snake’s help — with his nose stretched into the trunk we see today. The Snake then taught him that this new trunk was good for swatting flies and gathering food and schlooping mud on his head when it was hot.

He headed home, picking the melon rinds up with his trunk. His trunk was so useful that, when the other elephants saw it, they all went down to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to get new noses from the Crocodile. And that’s why today, all the elephants have trunks precisely like that of the Elephant’s Child.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. sticking out, having a bump

2. an elephant’s nose

3. unable to be satisfied

4. closed one eye

5. hit on the bottom

6. exactly

7. a large reptile that lives in slow-moving water

8. in an amusing way

9. striking, hitting

10. be quiet