The Elephant Who Challenged the World

AN ELEPHANT WHO lived in Africa woke up one morning with the conviction that he could defeat all the other animals in the world in single combat, one at a time. He wondered that he hadn’t thought of it before. After breakfast he called first on the lion. “You are only the King of Beasts,” bellowed the elephant, “whereas I am the Ace!” and he demonstrated his prowess by knocking the lion out in fifteen minutes, no holds barred. Then in quick succession he took on the wild boar, the water buffalo, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the giraffe, the zebra, the eagle, and the vulture, and he conquered them all. After that the elephant spent most of his time in bed eating peanuts, while the other animals, who were now his slaves, built for him the largest house any animal in the world had ever had. It was five stories high, solidly made of the hardest woods to be found in Africa. When it was finished, the Ace of Beasts moved in and announced that he could pin back the ears of any animal in the world. He challenged all comers to meet him in the basement of the big house, where he had set up a prize ring ten times the regulation size.

Several days went by and then the elephant got an anonymous letter accepting his challenge. “Be in your basement tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock,” the message read. So at three o’clock the next day the elephant went down to the basement to meet his mysterious opponent, but there was no one there, or at least no one he could see. “Come out from behind whatever you’re behind!” roared the elephant. “I’m not behind anything,” said a tiny voice. The elephant tore around the basement, upsetting barrels and boxes, banging his head against the furnace pipes, rocking the house on its foundations, but he could not find his opponent. At the end of an hour the elephant roared that the whole business was a trick and a deceit—probably ventriloquism—and that he would never come down to the basement again. “Oh, yes you will,” said the tiny voice. “You will be down here at three o’clock tomorrow and you’ll end up on your back.” The elephant’s laughter shook the house. “We’ll see about that,” he said.

The next afternoon the elephant, who slept on the fifth floor of the house, woke up at two-thirty o’clock and looked at his wristwatch. “Nobody I can’t see will ever get me down to the basement again,” he growled, and went back to sleep. At exactly three o’clock the house began to tremble and quiver as if an earthquake had it in its paws. Pillars and beams bent and broke like reeds, for they were all drilled full of tiny holes. The fifth floor gave way completely and crashed down upon the fourth, which fell upon the third, which fell upon the second, which carried away the first as if it had been the floor of a berry basket. The elephant was precipitated into the basement, where he fell heavily upon the concrete floor and lay there on his back, completely unconscious. A tiny voice began to count him out. At the count of ten the elephant came to, but he could not get up. “What animal are you?” he demanded of the mysterious voice in a quavering tone which had lost its menace. “I am the termite,” answered the voice.

The other animals, straining and struggling for a week, finally got the elephant lifted out of the basement and put him in jail. He spent the rest of his life there, broken in spirit and back.

MORAL: The battle is sometimes to the small, for the bigger they are the harder they fall.