Old Stories Page 2
with water, and then put it on the fire.”
Then the clever rabbit said, “I will get in first. When I beat on the cover of the pot, you open it. Then I will get out.”
And the monkey agreed.
So the rabbit got in the pot first, and the water started to warm up. The rabbit knocked, and the monkey opened the cover.
But when it was the monkey’s turn, the rabbit took a big stone and put it on the cover of the pot and sat on top of it!
When the water started to boil, the monkey knocked but the rabbit didn’t open the cover. So the monkey died, and the rabbit ate his best friend!
The Staring Game
A long time ago, the rabbit and the snake were good friends. One day they decided to go out in the bush. They began to chat with each other. But the rabbit was much cleverer than the snake, and the snake knew it!
So, they were discussing who could stare longer at the other without getting tired. The snake said, “Let's do this in a practical way. I will win by staring at you." So the rabbit agreed to the staring game.
The snake and the rabbit began to stare. They kept on doing that for several minutes. Then the snake felt tired. So, he got out of his body and only his skin was left looking at the rabbit. The rabbit continued looking at the snake's skin for several hours.
The rabbit thought he was the cleverest animal but on that day, his cleverness was ended!
The Sick Hyena
Once upon a time, long time ago, in a hunger time, a very smart hyena pretended that it was so sick that it couldn’t even go out. So many animals went to visit it in its home. But none of them ever came out!
On a very beautiful day, in the afternoon, the rabbit arrived. He thought he would like to visit the hyena too. He almost went into the hyena’s cave, but suddenly, he stopped and shouted into it,
“How are you? Are you healthy, my best friend? Are you getting better?”
“Don’t worry, my friend. Come in and give me some lovely company!”
“Oh, I don’t have a lot of time right now and you have so many visitors . . .”
“Don’t deceive yourself, rabbit, there’s nobody in here. It ‘s not good for me to stay here all sick and alone.”
“You are lying, I can see the footmarks of other animals that have gone in but haven’t come out . . . “
The hyena immediately went quiet and the rabbit said,
“Good-bye, friend of mine, I will visit you another day.”
And the rabbit ran far away from that place!
The Lion and the Rabbit
One day, the lion ordered all the forest animals not to eat mangoes on his farm. He was the only one who had permission to eat the mangoes, because he was the king.
The rabbit was very upset with what the lion said. He decided to get revenge. He went near the fence of the king’s house and shouted,
“Help, help, help…”
Suddenly the guards appeared and asked,
“What are you doing here? You are disturbing the king’s sleep.”
The rabbit answered,
“I have bad news for the king, if he will hear me.”
The guards began to laugh, and then they said,
“It is obvious that he won’t want to hear what you have to say, and he will not want to see you here either.”
The rabbit insisted one more time,
“If you don’t want to call him, you had better tie me in this tree, please, because a dangerous storm is coming and it will destroy us all.”
After the guards heard what the rabbit had said, they ran to tell the lion. The lion quickly came and asked,
“Is it true what you said?”
The rabbit answered,
“If it is not true, I swear, you can take out my eyes and cut out my tongue.”
The lion easily believed what the rabbit said, so he told the rabbit to tie him first in one of the trees. Then he was to tie his guards too.
The rabbit heard what the king said and he tied all of them. While he was tying the last guard, he pretended to be worrying about who could tie him, so he said,
“Who will tie me? Who will tie me?”
“Be quiet, close your mouth, don’t say anything!” answered the guards.
After all of them had been tied up, he went off to the mango tree and he ate mangoes as much as he wanted. Then he put more mangoes in a bag and went away singing,
“You are really silly, you are a donkey, and what am I? I am so clever…!”
After a time, the lion realized that the rabbit was lying because he only wanted to eat the mangoes. And he decided to take revenge on the rabbit as well. But he has never got the rabbit again until now!
Rabbit Goes to a Party
Once upon a time, the animals decided to have a party. But it was not for all of them. It was only for the animals that had horns.
The rabbit was preparing himself for the party. But then he found out that the party was not for everyone. It was just for a certain kind of animals.
The rabbit went somewhere and picked up some horns. Then he put this necklace on his head and went to the party.
During the party the rabbit ate, drank and danced. This made the rabbit tired and he fell down in the sun. But while the rabbit was sleeping, the horns fell off!
Then all the animals discovered that the rabbit was not the kind of animal that they wanted. So they pulled his ears till they got bigger and bigger, and then he ran away.
That’s the reason why rabbits have big ears!
Monkey Eats his own Tail
Once upon a time the rabbit was a great friend of the monkey. One day the rabbit said, “Let’s go for a walk and look for something to eat." The monkey accepted, but it was a trap for him.
They went to a farm of maize and they enjoyed eating it. But the clever rabbit had spoken to the owners of the farm, to catch the monkey. That was to show him he was foolish.
The clever rabbit started shouting, “Robbers! Robbers! Your maize is all gone!” and he jumped up and ran away.
Suddenly the owners appeared and found the monkey trying to fly away. But he has a long tail and it was stopping him. The owners followed him, saying, “Stop! Stop! We saw you, you are the monkey.” The monkey didn’t want to hear them.
But the owners of the farm succeeded in catching him and they started whipping him. He couldn’t bear the pain so he said, "I was with my friend rabbit. He is the one who invited me.”
The owners cut his tail off and told him, “Go and tell your friend that we cut off your tail.”
Then they went to the rabbit’s house and cooked the monkey’s tail to eat together. The rabbit invited the monkey to have lunch at his home and he accepted. When they arrived there, they ate. At the end the rabbit asked the monkey if he knew what he had just eaten.
The foolish monkey answered, "No! I don’t.”
The rabbit told him that he had eaten his own tail and then he ran away. And from then on they became enemies!
Why don’t we Kill our Mothers?
Once upon a time, the rabbit and the monkey were friends. Every time one had something, they would divide it between them. They were always together and shared all their secrets no matter what happened.
One day, the rabbit said, ”My dear friend, why don’t we kill our mothers? Then we can keep their food for ourselves.”
The monkey immediately accepted. He thought the idea was excellent because the dry season was coming on soon.
So the monkey went to his mother’s house and killed her and kept her food. But the rabbit did not kill his mother. He just hid her!
Later on that day, the rabbit took a little bit of the food and went out to get together with his friend. When he saw the monkey, he screamed, “What a lazy mother I had! That witch! I did well to kill her. And she did not have enough food for us, or even for herself. I would have had to take food to her, in the dry time . . .”
The monkey felt sorry for his friend and handed over all the food that he took from his
mother. And they shared it equally, as always.
So the dry season came on and food was becoming scarcer. The monkey felt sorry about his mother’s death, and he was also feeling weak and hungry. And he could not go to his mother’s home to feed himself because she was dead.
The rabbit pretended he was in the same situation. He would tell his friend that he was going out to drink water so he would not feel so hungry. But really he was going to meet his mother so she could feed him.
The monkey started to be suspicious because his friend was still quite fat. He decided to follow him to where he usually drank water. When the rabbit reached the river, the monkey could not believe what his eyes saw. The rabbit was singing a strange song:
Dear mother, dear mother
I am not like the monkey
He did not have love for his mother
He killed her!
Dear mother, dear mother
I am the rabbit, your son
I love you so much
Open the door and feed me!
The door opened, and the monkey saw the rabbit’s mother. Then he realized the rabbit had betrayed him, and he wanted revenge. So when his friend left, he came closer and sang:
Dear mother, dear mother
I am not like the monkey
He did not have love for his mother
He killed her!
Dear mother, dear mother
I am the rabbit, your son
I love you so much
Open the door and feed me!
The rabbit’s mother did not recognize his voice so she did not reply. The monkey tried over and over again. But he got no answer.
Next day when the rabbit went there again, his mother told him what happened, but he did not believe her.
The monkey kept singing the song at his home until he knew it really well. Then he went back to the river and sang:
Dear mother, dear mother
I am not like the monkey
He