The Elephant that wanted to be something else

The Elephant thought to itself one day, “Oh, being an Elephant is so boring. I wonder what it would be like if I were not an Elephant. What if, for example, I were a fish or a monkey or a mole. I’m sure that would be much more interesting”.

And, the more that the Elephant wondered this; the more the Elephant wanted to try being something else.

“First”, he said to himself, “I should try being a fish”.

And so the elephant went to the edge of a nearby lake and, bending his knees, he took a gigantic leap into the lake.

When he did, however, he made such an enormous splash that he threw hundreds of the fish, who had been swimming in the lake, up in the air and, naturally, this made all of the fish quite angry.

In fact, it made them so angry, that a lot of the fish got together and chased the elephant out of the lake.

“Well”, said the Elephant, after he had come back out of the lake and as he was shaking an angrily snapping fish off of his tail, “At least, now I know why Elephants don’t swim like fish”.

But then he wondered what it would be like to be a monkey and so he arranged with his friend Monkey to come and live in his tree with him for a day or so.

However, climbing a tree is not an easy thing for an Elephant, even with a monkey tugging on your trunk and the Elephant had an awful time trying to climb up into Monkey’s tree but what’s worse, when he did finally get up the tree, Elephant was so heavy that the branch he was sitting on broke beneath him and he came tumbling back down out of the tree, bumping his head.

“Ouch”, said the Elephant, “Rubbing its head with its trunk. Well, at least now I know why Elephants never climb trees”.

But then the Elephant wondered what it would be like to be a mole and live in a hole underground and so he arranged with his friend mole to come and stay with him.

Unfortunately, the Elephant was so big that all it could fit through moles hole was its trunk and, when it tried to fit the rest of itself through the hole; its large head and its long tusks; its enormous fat body and its four tree trunk legs, it only ended up breaking the hole apart and leaving a gigantic elephant sized hole in the ceiling of moles house.

“Oh no!”, said the mole, crying, “My lovely house. You’ve completely destroyed it!”.

“Well”, said the Elephant, blushing with embarrassment, “At least I know why Elephants don’t live underground”.

And so, sighing, the Elephant decided that it had done enough trying to be something else and it went back to being an elephant.

However, not long afterwards, the elephant was walking through the jungle, doing elephantly things when he saw a lion in a cage.

The lion had been trapped by a hunter and was very,  very frightened.

“Oh please”, he said to the elephant, “Please help me!”.

And so the Elephant, wrapping its trunk around one of the bars in the cage, pulled with all its elephant might and the elephant was so strong that the bar of the cage bent just enough for the lion to slip out of it.

“Oh thank you, thank you”, said the Lion, so relieved to be free, “I just don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there to help with your long trunk and your enormous elephant strength”.

And because the Lion was so grateful to the elephant and because he was also the chief lion of his lion pride, he said that he would happily make the elephant an honorary lion.

But the Elephant said he didn’t want to be Lion,

“No thanks”, he replied, “I don’t want to be anything else because I can see now that being an elephant is really quite a wonderful thing”.