Kids · 3 minThe Mice and the Elephants

Once upon a time there was an old town where nobody lived any more except the mice. They had the broken walls, the empty kitchens and the warm places under the stones, and they were very happy. Their king was a small brown mouse named Hiranyaka, who was proud of his whiskers.

Not far away lived a herd of elephants, led by a great old tusker named Gajapati. One dry summer their pond shrank to a puddle, and they heard of a lake on the other side of the old town. So every morning the whole herd walked to the lake, and the shortest road ran straight down the main street of the mice.

The elephants meant no harm. They simply did not look down. But every morning walls fell over, kitchens were flattened and whole families ran for their lives with their children in their mouths. By the end of the week, nobody in the town could get any sleep.

So Hiranyaka put on his best manners and went out to the road. He climbed on a stone, and even then he reached only as high as Gajapati's toenail. "Great king!" he shouted. "Your road runs through our homes. Please walk another way. Do this kindness, and some day we shall repay you."

Gajapati bent his great head down to hear, and then he had it repeated, and then he rumbled with laughter. "You will repay me, little one? Very well, you shall have your wish, and I shall look forward to it." He was a gentle old fellow, so from that day the herd walked round by the hill. The mice rebuilt their kitchens, and the matter was forgotten by everyone except Hiranyaka.

Some months later the king's hunters came to that forest to catch elephants for the royal stables. They tied thick ropes between the great trees and they drove the herd into them. By evening every elephant was caught, and the harder they pulled, the tighter the ropes became. Gajapati lifted his trunk and called out, and his call went over the forest as far as the old town.

Hiranyaka sat up in bed. "I know that voice," he said. "Wake everybody. Tell them to bring their teeth."

All that night, the mice ran through the forest in a long brown line, thousands of them, grandmothers and babies too. They found the elephants in the moonlight. Hiranyaka climbed up on Gajapati's foot and bowed. "Good evening, great king. I have come about that small matter."

Then the mice began to chew. It is not a loud sound, one mouse chewing. Ten thousand mice chewing sounds like rain. One by one the ropes frayed and snapped and fell away, and before the sun came up the whole herd stood free. When the hunters arrived in the morning, they found only some chewed string and a great many footprints going home.

Gajapati lowered his head until his great eye was level with the little king. "I laughed at you," he said. "You did," said Hiranyaka. "It was a very good laugh. Mind the kitchens on your way back."

And from that day, whenever a young elephant of that herd laughed at something small, old Gajapati would lift him gently by the ear and say: "Be kind to everyone you meet, little one. You do not yet know who will come for you in the night."