Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
"I'll put some more water on you!" "No you don't! Now you swim along!" suddenly cried Mrs. Stumptail. "Get away!" With that she tapped Keedah on his head with her trunk two or three times, and, when an elephant wants to, it can strike very hard with its long nose, even though it seems soft. "Ouch! Ouch!" trumpeted Keedah as he swam out of reach of Mrs. Stumptail. "Ouch! Let me alone!"
"See, we are at the jungle river now, and we will go across." "Oh, but I'm afraid!" cried Umboo, holding back. "I don't want to go in all that water." Mrs. Stumptail reached out her trunk and caught her little boy around the middle of his stomach. "You must do as I tell you!" she said. "Up you go!" and she lifted him high in the air.
"But we won't go until he is strong enough," said Umboo's father. "Here," he said to Mrs. Stumptail, "eat this branch of palm nuts. They are good and sweet. Eat them while I go and see Old Tusker. I'll tell him not to start to lead the herd to another part of the jungle until Umboo is stronger."
These were the babies of the herd who were too small to ride safely on the backs of the big creatures. "Pooh! I'm bigger than you! I can swim like the other elephants!" said Keedah; a large elephant boy, as he looked up and saw Umboo on his mother's back. "I don't have to be carried across a river! I can swim by myself." "And so will my little boy, soon," said Mrs. Stumptail.
Tusker stood on top of a little hill, his trunk high in the air, making all sorts of queer, trumpeting noises. "We were waiting for you," said Mr. Stumptail to Umboo's mother. "We are going to run away and hide. Tusker is calling you." "Well, tell him we are here now," said Mrs. Stumptail. "I had to give Umboo his lesson."
As Umboo and his mother were eating the palm nuts, along came Keedah. "Hello!" cried the other elephant boy. "How did you get the palm tree down, Mrs. Stumptail?" "I did it," said Umboo. "You?" cried Keedah. "No! You are not strong enough for that!" "No, I wasn't strong enough to knock this tree over with my head, or pull it down with my trunk, until I loosened the dirt at the roots," said Umboo.
Stumptail. "That must be the danger of which Tusker spoke. Be quiet and listen to what he is saying." The old elephant leader had to trumpet through his trunk as loudly as he could to be heard above the noise of the guns and clappers. "There is danger, O Elephants!" cried Tusker. "The man-smell is all around us, and the terrible noises are behind, and on both sides of us.
There are many kinds of palm trees, and on some grow cocoanuts, and on others dates; but the palm nuts the elephants eat are different. Umboo looked up at the palm nuts growing on the tree in the jungle, and said: "Oh, how I wish I had some of those." "Well," said Mrs. Stumptail, "how do you think you can get them?"
Some of them still tore around, trumpeting, but the big tame elephants pulled them with ropes to the trees where they were made fast. Mrs. Stumptail, and the other mother elephants, soon calmed down, and the boys and girls, like Umboo and Keedah, did as their mothers did. In a short time the wild elephants were all either tied fast to trees, or were led away between two of the tame ones.
It was easy, and here is a branch of it for you, and it has some nuts on," and he handed his mother the one he had brought with him all the way through the jungle. "Oh, thank you!" said Mrs. Stumptail. "You are a very good boy, Umboo, and I shall like these nuts very much. But why did you stay away so long?" "I was lost," answered the elephant chap.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking