Long ago, there was an elephant who wanted to see the world. He had been a circus elephant for years, in the same town, doing the same thing every day. He had met several different kinds of people from everywhere around the United States. One day, at a circus show, he overheard one of the men from Florida speak about how a bad storm had come through causing the ocean to rise up and flood the town. The elephant had never thought about a large body of water getting mad enough it would want to flood the town, and he spent a long amount of time thinking about this. Since it was the end of the circus season, the elephant thought it would be perfect timing to try something new and travel to new places.
The elephant packed his things and within the next day he was on his way to traveling the country. The elephant began to think about how exciting it would be to travel and see new sights and people. One day, after days of traveling, the elephant found himself on new territory that he had never seen before- the beach. The elephant was used to being in a cage most of the time, so he was very unsure of this new place, but remembered hearing stories about it back in the circus.
He was tired from all of the travels he had done over the past few days, so he wandered up to the sand and although he was unsure, he began to lie down for the night. The sky was dark at this point, so the elephant had no trouble closing his eyes to sleep.
As he was lying down he started to think about a story he had heard from a man from Florida about how back home there was a huge body of water in some places with sand, that sometimes got angry and would start viciously flooding the towns. Although scared by the thought that might happen, the elephant was almost asleep when he heard huge crashing noises, one after another. He squinted his eyes to look, and just as he was able to make out what seemed like a body of water, a large wave crashed down onto him. He then heard a loud rumble from the sky and ran the opposite way as fast as he could.
As he passed other humans and animals he began to scream, “The town is about to flood! Beware!”
The elephant kept running with fear in his eyes as a dog asked, “Why are you running in a panic?”
The elephant stated, “I have no time to tell. The water is about to flood this whole town!”
The dog began to run next to him barking about the flood.
The loud rumbling noise roared again right as the cheetah approached the elephant and the dog.
“What’s wrong? Why are you guys so scared?” said the cheetah.
“The flood is coming! The flood is coming!” cried the dog.
Soon, animal after animal began to join the group of scared running animals and caused the whole town into a panic. The residents in the town knew how dangerous flooding from the ocean could be, so they began to pack their stuff in preparation to evacuate.
Just then, the herd of animals ran into a flock of pelicans.
“What is going on here?” asked the pelicans in unison.
“The major flood is about to happen! I was sleeping on the sand when suddenly a large amount of water began to rise up and fell and crashed on me! I began to run and that made it angrier, so the whole thing began to make a loud rumbling noise!”
The wise pelicans all began to howl with laughter and together said, “Silly elephant! That rumbling noise was just a thunderstorm about to happen! The ocean waves get larger whenever a storm occurs. Do not worry, you didn’t make anything angry.”
The elephant sighed with relief and followed the pelicans, the wise animals of ocean-land, into a home so he would not be caught in the storm. One by one, the other animals returned home, relieved that no flood would be occurring that night.
Author's Note: I was inspired by the Anthology, "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit". The story was about a rabbit who was scared the world was going to end. One night, a coconut fell from a tree and landed by the rabbit making him think the world was falling down. He ran throughout the town creating a wave of panic throughout the animals. The rumor was spreading quickly that the world was going to end until the word got back to the wise lion. The lion made the rabbit show him where he got this idea of the world ending and when the lion was shown, he connected the dots that it was just a coconut that fell. The whole town was relieved that the world was still intact. I loved the storyline, so I used a similar plot, just with different characters and in a different setting. I used uncommon characters to make the plot less expected. I thought the twist of using a large animal, like an elephant, to play the timid role was interesting, as well as using the pelican which is known to be foolish, to play the wise animal. I thought the idea of a short, yet captivating, the storyline made for an easy read and a fun story to write.
Bibliography. "The Foolish, Timid Rabbit" from Jakatas Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. https://sites.google.com/view/jatakas/rabbit?authuser=0.