Somewhere far away in the jungles of India live Indian elephants. They live in herds. Female elephants are incredibly caring mothers who take care of the elephant calves until they are fully grown-up.
There lived a female elephant whose son was very playful. The Baby Elephant loved playing hide-and-seek so much he would run away from his mom to the jungle and hide there. The Mother Elephant would look for him everywhere, loudly blowing her trunk. Having found her son, she would spank the runaway with her trunk and take him back to the herd.
The Baby Elephant also loved to scare the rest of his herd. Once the prankster ran into the jungle and began to stomp loudly. He knew elephants could hear well not only with their ears, but also with their feet.
Not being able to find her son in the herd, the Mother Elephant roared: “Something must have happened to my baby!”
The other elephants ran to the rescue straightaway, however, having found the elephant calf, they realized he had been kidding them and elephants began to menacingly blow their trunks. Afterwards they even spanked the mischievous boy.
But the Baby Elephant could not have enough: “What else can I do?”– he would think to himself.
One day, when the Baby Elephant saw the surface of water gleaming in the sun, he immediately rushed there to bathe.
He flopped into water and got stuck up to its belly! The water turned out to be a swamp – the Baby Elephant just could not get out of there on his own. He got very frightened and anxiously trumpeted, calling for help.
The elephants came running and pulled the poor thing out of the swamp. Naturally, this little accident did not serve a lesson for our friend – he was a really naughty one.
And one day, when all the elephants were swimming, the Baby Elephant ran to the forest to feast on some bananas, where he was suddenly attacked by an animal. The beast bit the calf with all his force! The baby elephant did his best to defend himself and resisted as much as he could; then grabbed the beast by the paw with its trunk and threw it against the tree so hard that the beast drew his last breath. Exhausted by the fight, the Baby Elephant fell on the ground, bleeding. He could not blow, he could not stomp, he could not hear his family calling him… The Baby Elephant lay like that for several days, but finally he got up, because he needed to find a medicinal herb. He needed to quench his thirst. He also needed to dip in water to wash off the blood.