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Updated: September 15, 2025
All the smells that came to him were those of the jungle the soft mud smell, the odor of wet, green leaves and the smell of the falling rain. All those smells Umboo knew and loved. But he could not smell the other elephants, and if he could have done so he would have known which way to walk to get to them.
He did so, and Umboo liked it very much, letting the sweet juice trickle down his throat. "I wish they would give me sugar every time I take out the white rag," thought Umboo. "It's fun!" After this Umboo did not pile lumber any more.
Umboo was standing on the bank of the river, having just been in for a swim, when Batu, another elephant boy, came up to him. "Do you want to have some fun?" asked Batu. "Yes," answered Umboo. "What doing?" "Do you see Keedah over there, scraping his toe nails on a big stone?" asked Batu, for sometimes the toe nails of elephants grow too long and too rough, and have to be worn down.
"I am going to see if I can do as Keedah said he could do, and knock over a tree without digging at the roots," answered the elephant boy. "The ground is rain-soaked now, and soft." "Very well," spoke his mother. "You may try it. But don't go too far away. The herd may move on through the jungle, and then you would be lost." "I'll be careful," promised Umboo.
"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.
And one day, as he was standing near a pile of lumber, that he had helped to build, one of the white men, whom he knew, and who had been kind to Umboo, took a handkerchief from his white, linen coat pocket, and wiped his face, for the day was hot. Then a little spirit of mischief seemed to enter Umboo.
"What are we going to do when we get on the other side of the river?" asked Umboo of his mother, as he reached his trunk down in the water and took a little drink. "Oh, we will rest a while, eat something, perhaps, and then we will keep on marching to a better part of the jungle," she answered.
"Our chance for what?" asked Umboo, speaking in elephant talk, of course, and which the Indian keepers did not always understand. "This is our chance to run away and go back to the jungle," went on Keedah. "When the men are not looking, after we have hauled out a few big logs, we will go away and hide. At night we can run off to the jungle."
This was to get them quiet after their long trip, and to make them feel at home. Umboo did not have to be tamed, for he was already kind and gentle. But some of the lions and tigers were fierce and wild, and they had to get to know that the circus men would not harm them. Most of the elephants, like Umboo, were no longer wild, but they knew nothing about being trained to do tricks.
"Oh, yes we will," said Snarlie himself, a big, handsome striped tiger in a cage not far from where the monkeys lived. "You can tell us a good story, Umboo." "And make it as long as the story Woo-Uff, the lion, told us," begged Humpo, the camel. "I liked his story." "Thank you," spoke Woo-Uff, as he rolled over near the edge of his cage where he could hear better.
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