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The Elephants who Showed Off

By Anand Shekhar; Illsutrations by Anup Singh

A long long time ago, elephants had small, shiny and beautiful noses. Vain that they were, they would always turn their noses up in the air when they passed by any other animal. They were plain show-offs.

Naturally, the other animals did not like this very much. Finally, one clever monkey decided to do something about it.

He went up to the wise hermit who lived on the mountain and asked him if there was some way to make the elephants' noses long and ugly.

"I do have some Magic Pepper with me. It can do just that," said the hermit. But he refused to give it to the monkey saying that it would not be a very nice thing to do to the elephants, even though they always turned their noses up at everyone else.

But the monkey was extremely clever. He waited till the hermit went to sleep and went into his hut. He looked around and finally found the Magic Pepper. He quickly took a handful of it and ran away from the mountain back to the forest.

There he saw the elephants drinking water from the lake. He sneaked up to the lake and emptied all the Magic Pepper into the water. The elephants continued drinking, blissfully unaware that they were drinking in the Magic Pepper along with the water.