The Elephants and the Mice

Deep in a great forest lived a large colony of mice, who had built their burrows and tunnels beneath an open stretch of grassland they had called home for generations. Not far away, a severe drought had dried up every water source the local elephants relied on, forcing an enormous herd, led by a wise old elephant king, to travel across the land in search of a new lake.

Their path led straight across the open grassland — directly over the mice colony. Thousands of great feet thundered across the ground, and by the time the herd had passed, many mice burrows had been crushed and countless mice had lost their lives.

The surviving mice, terrified and grieving, sent their bravest representative to speak with the elephant king. "Great King," the little mouse said, standing as tall as he could before the enormous creature, "your herd has destroyed our homes and killed our families without even knowing we were here. We ask only this: when you pass this way again, please take a different path."

The elephant king was moved by the mouse's courage and ashamed of the harm his herd had unknowingly caused. He agreed at once, and from that day, the elephants always went around the mice colony rather than through it.

Years later, the elephant king's fortunes changed. Human hunters, seeking to capture the herd, set enormous rope nets across the elephants' usual paths, and one night the entire herd was caught, bound tightly and unable to move, awaiting their captors' return at dawn.

Word of the disaster reached the mice colony by morning, carried by a bird who had witnessed it all. Remembering the kindness the elephant king had shown them, the mouse who had once spoken on their behalf gathered every mouse in the colony. Through the night, they worked together, gnawing tirelessly through the thick ropes strand by strand, until every single elephant was free.

The herd escaped just before the hunters returned, and the elephants never forgot the tiny creatures who had once been harmed by them — and who had saved them all the same.