The Elephant Who Cried Mouse!

Once upon a time there was an elephant Ronald. I'm sure  you know how this goes. He was bewildered, frightened, absolutely terrified of mice.

And mice, as you know, are very nice.

Can you possibly imagine what there is to be frightened of in a mouse? They have the tiniest teeth in the world! They have soft, furry little bodies! They are the size of your finger!

But Ronald couldn't help it! We don't always know whey we're scared of things.

Perhaps when Ronald was little, a mouse popped out of a tree when he was sleeping one night, and jumped close to his face, and so seemed very big to our poor little Ronald.

Perhaps Ronald had a bad dream about a mouse. There things can happen, especially when we eat too much chocolate before bed. And Ronald sure did like to eat a lot of chocolate before bed.

In fact, eating chocolate in bed was his favourite thing to do!

So anyway, here was Ronald, a great big grown-up five year old elephant, who was absolutey, earthquakingly, dumbfoundedly, flabbergastedly terrified of mice.

And ecause he felt so frozen-stiff petrified of the little micey kingdom, he naturally assumed that all of his elephant family felt the same way.

And being a bit of a joker in his family, he liked to scream out mouse whenever he thought he would like to scare them and have a laugh,

"Mouse" he would cry behind his Mumma, and she would jump a metre in the air and when she landed, all the trees in the vicinity would come crashing to the ground. It was a terrible mess.

HeeHee! Ronald would giggle behind a tree. Mamma wasn't very happy. Mumma wasn't scared of mice, but she knew Ronald was, and every time he screamed Mouse she would think she needed to save hime from somewhere where a mouse was.

"Mouse" Ronald would scream behind Poppa. And Poppa would jump a metre in the air, and when he landed all the water in the lakes would drench the villages, and there'd be no water left for the fish.

HeeHee! Ronald would giggle behind a log. Poppa wasn't very happy. Poppa wasn't scared of mice, but he hated loud noises, and every time Ronald screamed Mouse it made his heart gallop like a galloping horse untill he realised it was just Ronald screaming "Mouse".

This worked like a treat for many months. Ronald would scream Mouse and everyone would get scared. But one day, Ronald screamed Mouse and nobody said or did anything at all.

Hmm. Maybe they didn't hear him. "Mouse" he screamed again. But his whole family ignored him and went about their business. They were so used to him screaming Mouse that they had simply become used to it. To them, now, it was just another sound of the jungle.

And then Ronald turned around and what do you think he saw?

A scary, hairy, creepy, crawly, chittering little mouse.

"EEEK" shouted Ronald, and jumped into a tree. The Mouse stood looking up at hime, and scratched his head.

"What's wrong?" the mouse said. "Didn't you call for me?"

And he was so soft and confused, so friendly and cute, that Ronald realised he was silly being scared.

"Actually, I guess I did!" he said to the mouse.

And so Ronald came down from the tree. Now Ronald still cries "Mouse" from time to time. But when he does, his Mouse friend comes and they play on the seesaw together. 

And they both scream together... with laughter!