Once upon a time, not so long ago since this is a modern retelling, there lived a lion.
He was the King of the Jungle. He gained his status through accident of birth (he was born into a family of lions instead of into, say, a family of aardvarks). Later, he maintained his position through brute strength at some times, and cunning at others. It wasn't important how he got there --he would have gotten there, regardless. He was more majestic than the rest of the beasts, so he was the King.
The other animals gave up challenging the lion after a while. After that last time, when the monkey challenged him, they learned: you don't challenge the King. That poor monkey. No, none of the other animals wanted that to happen to them. And besides, sometimes, he threw one of the other animals a scrap from whatever he was gorging himself on. He could be generous, as long as you told him how resplendent his mane was or complimented his ever-increasing mighty figure.
Time passed. The King remained king, and the other animals kept out of his way, except when they had to bring him something to eat. Then, they crept up quietly, in case he was sleeping, and dropped off his meals. I won't go into what he was eating, but I will say the Jungle was no place for the old or infirm. Everyone was required to bring his meals. It was quite something when it was the smallest creature Mouse's turn. Dragging that carcass took every ounce of energy she had in her small body! She was exhausted by the time she got to the lion, and so, she was careless when she dropped the elephant off for him to eat. The trunk landed on his left paw.
"WHAT?" he roared, startling awake.
"I'm sorry, sir!"
All of the animals moving nearby froze in place, as did Mouse, who was sure she would be eaten as an appetizer before he started on the elephant.
"I was sleeping --SLEEPING! How dare you, you pathetic little critter? You! Gazelle! Come here!"
Gazelle slowly neared the two and the elephant carcass. Gazelle was chastising himself for not being somewhere else at that exact moment.
"Take this ...mouse and drop it into the river. I am too busy doing important things, or I'd teach it a lesson myself." He licked his chops and prepared to eat the elephant. The mouse was not worth eating, so drowning it in the river made more sense.
Gazelle hesitated.
"DO IT!" he roared. "Or I'll call Cheetah over!"
Gazelle gathered Mouse by gently gripping her tail with his teeth and carried her off towards the river.
On the way, Mouse pleaded with Gazelle, "Oh, please don't drown me! I was so tired! I didn't mean to drop the elephant, but it was so heavy ..."
Gazelle set Mouse down by the river. "Don't worry about it. I'm not going to drown you. That guy's a jerk. He wouldn't notice if I drowned you or not. In fact, why don't we stay over here for a while? I might invite a few friends to join us."
So Gazelle and Mouse continued to live by the river and the other animals began to join them. There were a few animals who didn't move right away --Hyena and Vulture, for example, refused to believe that things were changing since they did alright for themselves under Lion, and he must surely be as powerful as he kept telling them all to have kept power for so long. Even they began to recognize that Lion's meals were shrinking, however, and thought maybe they too should be moving along.
In the end, Lion was left alone, bewildered about who would bring him his meals. He wanted to go look for the others, to get them back in line, but found he had difficulty standing on his own.
Mouse, in the meantime, thrived. So did Gazelle. So did the other creatures. Not dragging the dead to feed the King did wonders for them all.
No comments:
Post a Comment