The Elephant's Child (Campfire Story)

In the High and Far-Off Times, O Best Beloved, the Elephant had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side, but he couldn't pick up things with it.

But there was one Elephant, a new Elephant, an Elephant's Child, who was full of 'satiable curtiosity. That means he asked ever so many questions. He asked his tall aunt, the Ostrich, WHY her tail-feathers grew just so, and his tall aunt the Ostrich SPANKED him with her hard, hard claw. He asked his tall uncle, the Giraffe, WHY his skin was spotty, and his tall uncle the Giraffe SPANKED him with his hard, hard hoof. He asked his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus, WHY her eyes were red, and his broad aunt the Hippopotamus SPANKED him with her broad, broad hoof. And still he was full of 'satiable curtiosity.

One fine morning, the Elephant's Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, 'What does the CROCODILE have for dinner?'

Then everybody said 'Hush!' in a loud and dretful tone, and they SPANKED him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.

So the Elephant's Child went to ask the Kolokolo Bird, who sat in the middle of a wait-a-bit thorn bush. And the Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, 'Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.'

That very next morning, the Elephant's Child took a hundred pounds of bananas, and a hundred pounds of sugar-cane, and seventeen melons, and said to all his dear families, 'Goodbye. I am going to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out what the CROCODILE has for dinner.' And they all SPANKED him once more, for luck.

He went from Graham's Town to Kimberley, and from Kimberley to Khama's Country, eating melons all the way, and throwing the rinds about, because he could not pick them up. At last he came to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, precisely as the Kolokolo Bird had said.

Now, you must know, O Best Beloved, that till that very week, the Elephant's Child had never seen a CROCODILE, and did not know what one was like. It was all his 'satiable curtiosity.

The first thing he found was a Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake, curled round a rock. 'Excuse me,' said the Elephant's Child, most politely, 'but have you seen such a thing as a CROCODILE in these parts?'

'Have I seen a CROCODILE?' said the Python, in a voice of dretful scorn. 'What will you ask me next?'

So the Elephant's Child said goodbye very politely and walked on along the bank. And he trod on what he thought was a log of wood, at the very edge of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River.

But it was really the CROCODILE, O Best Beloved. And the CROCODILE winked one eye, like this.

'Excuse me,' said the Elephant's Child, 'but do you happen to have seen a CROCODILE in these parts?'

The CROCODILE winked the other eye, and lifted half his tail out of the mud. 'Come hither, Little One,' he said. 'Why do you ask such things?'

'Because,' said the Elephant's Child, 'I want to know what the CROCODILE has for dinner.'

'Come hither, Little One,' said the CROCODILE, 'for I am the CROCODILE.' And he wept crocodile tears to show it was quite true. 'Come hither, and I'll whisper.'

So the Elephant's Child put his head down close to the CROCODILE's musky, tusky mouth, and the CROCODILE caught him by his little nose, which up to that very week, day, hour and minute, had been no bigger than a boot.

'I think,' said the CROCODILE, between his teeth, 'I think today I will begin with Elephant's Child!'

'Led go!' said the Elephant's Child, speaking through his nose. 'You are hurtig be!'

Then the Elephant's Child sat back on his little haunches, and PULLED, and PULLED, and PULLED. And his nose began to stretch. And the CROCODILE floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he PULLED, and PULLED, and PULLED.

Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake came down from the bank, and knotted himself in a double-clove-hitch round the Elephant's Child's hind legs, and said, 'Rash and inexperienced traveller, we will now seriously devote ourselves to a little high tension.' And he PULLED, and the Elephant's Child PULLED, and the CROCODILE PULLED. And the nose kept stretching, and stretching, and stretching.

At last the CROCODILE let go of the Elephant's Child's nose with a plop that you could hear all up and down the Limpopo. And the Elephant's Child sat down most hard and sudden. And when he looked at his nose, it was a trunk, just like all elephants have today.

At first he was dismayed. But soon a fly bit him on the shoulder, and before he knew what he was doing, he lifted up his trunk and hit that fly dead with the end of it. 'Vantage number one!' said the Python. When he got hungry, he put out his trunk, plucked a bundle of grass, and stuffed it into his own mouth. 'Vantage number two!' And when the sun was hot, he scooped up a schloop of mud from the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo, and slapped it on his head, where it made a cool, schloopy-sloshy mud-cap. 'Vantage number three!'

Then the Elephant's Child went home across Africa, frisking and whisking his trunk. And when his dear families tried to spank him the way they always had, he uncurled his trunk and SPANKED them right back, every one of them, till they were very warm and greatly astonished. Then they all went off in a hurry to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to borrow new noses from the CROCODILE.

And ever since that day, O Best Beloved, all the Elephants you will ever see have trunks precisely like the trunk of the curious Elephant's Child.

Storyteller tips: the crowd loves "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees." After the second time, let them say it with you. The tug-of-war is the big moment, so have everyone lean back on PULLED and slap their knees on SPANKED, and say the Elephant's Child's lines through your pinched nose.

Condensed from "The Elephant's Child" in Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, 1902, now in the public domain.