Week 7 Story: Elephant and the Tortoise

 In the beginning, there was war amongst the animals. The elephants were at the top of the food chain and would eat the majority of the food available. The rest of the animals had to fight amongst themselves for the elephant's leftovers. As you can probably guess, this caused a lot of tension amongst the other animals. One day, the tortoise got his food stolen by a cheetah and because he was too slow, he could not get it back. This angered the tortoise so much that he decided he was going to stop this madness. He gathered a large group and held a meeting with all of the animals except for the elephants. In the meeting, the tortoise came up with the idea to combine the force of all the animals and wage an attack on the elephants. Even though there were many more animals than elephants, the elephants were massive, strong, and healthy because they had been eating full meals their entire lives. 

During the meeting, the tortoise explained that the animals must all share the food evenly while also training to become stronger and faster so they could defeat the evil elephants. The meeting ended and the training began. 

Training would be held once a day for 3 hours. In training, each animal would practice fighting in a way that suited their abilities. The birds were the air force, the sea life was the navy, and the majority of the troops were on land and they formed the army. Combining these three forces, the elephants would stand no chance. 

After months of training, the animals finally felt like they could successfully defeat the elephants. They decided to take in the morning during daytime so they could see each other and properly coordinate their attacks. The war began. The elephants put up a very good fight and fought for a long time. Eventually, the elephants either died or became too tired to continue. The surviving elephants were taken as prisoners of war and were forced to work in order to receive food. The rest fo the animals had won and could finally eat plenty of food and enjoy their lives!

(Animals in the Wild)

Bibliography: The Elephant and the Tortoise. Elphinstone Dayrell. Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria

Author's Note: I wanted to keep the idea behind the greedy elephant eating all of the food but I wanted to make it bigger. I also liked that the tortoise was the mastermind behind the attack in the original so I kept that aspect of the story as well. I changed this story a lot from the original because I wanted there to be a war. In the original, the animals all lived together in harmony. I wanted to make the animals hate the elephants from the start and so I made the elephants the bad guys and had them eat all of the food from the animals. I also wanted to make this more than just one animal being mad at an elephant and so I made it to where all of the animals collectively hated the elephants. I also made them wage a war against the elephants and ultimately end up winning. Hope you enjoyed!