Roger Ort, Age 14, of Long Island City, N.Y., for his question:
Why are elepharits afraid of mice?
Jumbo is a most impressive animal the biggest land animal in the entire world. When you See an elephant for the first time, you may find it hard to believe that he is real. Your imagination gets a jolt. When this happens, your mind tends to become fanciful. People have been handing on fanciful tales about giant Jumbo for generations.
The elephant we meet is likely to live in a zoo or a circus. He has his own quarters where he is provided with food and drinking water. The bulk of his food is hay, bales and bales of hay. And a mouse, as everyone knows, loves to make his home in a bundle of crisp, cozy hay.
If you search among the hay in the elephant house, you are surf to find several families of mice. There may be more mice in the corners, and if there is straw on the floor they are likely to be there, also. It is almost impossible to keep the little fellows out, so every elephant shares his home with a number of Mouse families.
Elephant keepers report that the tiny fellows scamper through the very hay that Jumbo is eating. They trip over the floor between his giant feet. And the big animal pays no attention to them at all. In fact, his keeper will tell you that he does not seem to notice that the mice are there.. He shows no fear of them, and the huge animal certainly has no reason in the world to be afraid of a little Mouse.
This has been proved many times, but people still hand on the tale that elephants are afraid of mice. They also tell a tale of the elephant graveyard Where old, wild elephants are said to go when they die. This, too, is a fanciful story. A weary old elephant usually dies in the jungle where vultures and jackals strip his giant bones in a few days.
Sometimes he becomes restless in the scorching heat before the rainy season and wanders off in search of water. The drenching monsoon arrives suddenly, and the weary giant may become trapped in the deluge. He sticks in the mud, and his bulky body sinks out of sight far from the imaginary graveyard where people say the elephant goes to die.
Jumbo, they say, never forgets a person who has offended him. He will wait, we are told, for years to get even. But the experts tell us that this, too, is a fanciful elephant story. Jumbo is fond of people and devoted to his keeper and a few human friends. He remembers them kindly. But he is not prone to carry a grudge, and his memory is no better than that of other smart animals.