_In which we find out what happened by asking questions._
At first elephants had short noses. Listen while I tell you how
they came to have long noses, which we call trunks.
Once there was a little elephant who lived in Africa. He asked ever
so many questions. He asked the ostrich why her feathers grew so
long. He asked the giraffe what made his skin spotty. He asked the
hippopotamus why her eyes were red. He asked about everything he
saw.
One morning he asked: “What does the crocodile have for dinner?”
Everybody said: “Hush! Don’t ask so many foolish questions!”
He came upon the Kolokolo bird sitting on a thorn bush and asked
what the crocodile has for dinner. She told him to go to the Limpo
river and find out. The next morning he went to the river.
He had never seen a crocodile, so when he saw one he did not know
it. He first saw a big snake on a rock and said:
“Excuse me, but have you seen a crocodile around here?”
“What will you ask next?” asked the snake.
“Excuse me, but what does he have for dinner?” asked the elephant.
The snake was angry and he shook his coils and thrust out his
tongue at the elephant.
“Good-bye, snake,” he said and left. He came across something he
thought was a log in the water, but it was a crocodile.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but have you seen a crocodile around here?
What does he have for dinner?”
“Come here,” said the crocodile, “I will whisper it to you.”
The crocodile said to himself: “I will eat the little elephant
to-day.”
He caught the elephant by the nose and began to pull hard.
“Let go!” said the elephant. “That hurts.”
The snake came from the rocks and said: “He will pull you into the
water if you don’t pull hard.” He pulled hard and the crocodile
pulled hard. The elephant’s nose began to stretch and stretched
nearly five feet. “This is too much for me,” he said.
Then the snake wound himself around the elephant’s legs and
helped him pull. They pulled harder than the crocodile, until the
elephant’s nose was all out of shape. Then the crocodile let go.
The elephant thanked the snake, wrapped his nose in banana leaves
and hung it in the river to cool. He sat there for three days
waiting for it to shrink, but it grew no shorter. His nose was a
real elephant’s trunk.
The elephant found he could use it many ways. He could kill flies,
pull grass and carry it to his mouth with it. When he was hot he
could get mud and put it on his head. He could pick up things and
get fruit from the trees. He could send a noise down his trunk that
could be heard far and near. And from that day to this, elephants
have long noses, and what is more, they seem to like them that way.