LONG AGO IN INDIA there was an old deserted village.

Empty were the old

houses, streets and shops. The windows were long broken, the stairs collapsed.
Making it one very fine place for mice to run around, you can be sure! For
hundreds of happy years the mice had made this deserted pile of rubble their
home.

They built a wide network of tunnels, forming extensive mazes. What good times
they had, coming and going, with their many dinner parties and festivals,
weddings and feasts. And so time passed.

All the elephants were thinking about as they marched was how good it would be
to jump in that lake for a cool swim. They did not know that as they marched,
those big elephant feet were stamping down on the web of mazes and tunnels the
mice had painstakingly created over so many years. What a mess the elephants
left behind!
Home » The Mice and the Elephants

The Mice and the Elephants

The Mice and the

Elephants
Illustrated By: Sarah Frank
Listen to the story while you read along!

LONG AGO IN INDIA there was an old deserted village. Empty were the old
houses, streets and shops. The windows were long broken, the stairs collapsed.
Making it one very fine place for mice to run around, you can be sure! For
hundreds of happy years the mice had made this deserted pile of rubble their
home.

They built a wide network of tunnels, forming extensive mazes. What good times

they had, coming and going, with their many dinner parties and festivals,

weddings and feasts. And so time passed.

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One day, a herd of elephants, numbering in the thousands, stamped through the

village on their way to a big lake in the west.

All the elephants were thinking about as they marched was how good it would be
to jump in that lake for a cool swim. They did not know that as they marched,
those big elephant feet were stamping down on the web of mazes and tunnels the
mice had painstakingly created over so many years. What a mess the elephants
left behind!

The mice quickly held a meeting.

“If the herd comes back this way again, our community is doomed!” cried one

mouse.

"We won't stand a chance!" cried another.

“If the herd comes back this way again, our community is
doomed!" cried one mouse.

There was only one thing to do. A group of brave mice followed the elephant

footprints all the way to the lake. There they found the King of the Elephants.

Bowing before the King, one mouse spoke for the others and said, “O King, not far

from here is our mice community. It’s in that old deserted village you passed

through. You may remember it?”

“Of course I remember it,” said the Elephant King. “We are elephants. Elephants

never forget. But we did not know a mice community was there.”

“How could you?” said the mouse.