This time our story is of a very special baby elephant called “Vera”. Baby Vera was born with very curious eyes. She was especially curious about the sky. She could stare at the sky for days! While all the other animals would play and chatter around her, Vera was happy to just sit there looking up no matter how loudly her friends would try to get her attention. Now even though most of the time Vera’s silent staring was harmless, one day she gave her friends a real fright.
The elephant families went out every morning to drink from the lake to find Vera sitting in her usual spot staring up, without realising an entire day had passed already. One morning the elephants went out as usual and, as they always did, passed by Vera’s spot to check on her. But this time Vera wasn’t there! They quickly started spreading out to search for her when they suddenly heard her best friend (place name here) shouting out “Vera’s in the lake! Vera’s in the lake! Help!!”
You see, even though elephants bathed in the lake, the baby elephants weren’t allowed to go into the deep parts, but Vera was so amazed at the colours of the sky that night that she was even more curious than ever! She didn’t even notice when her favourite spot started breaking under her weight, from sitting there every day since she was born, and floated in the lake with her still sitting on it!! Vera was getting too far away while the other animals kept screaming and shouting to try to get her attention but nothing worked. Luckily, the animals’ shouting did get someone else’s attention…The immigrating Ibis birds who flew all the way from Egypt every year happened to be flying over them at that moment and heard the shouting elephants. Their leader quickly ordered his flock to fly down and do everything they can to “help get that baby elephant’s attention!”.
Suddenly Vera was surrounded by big white birds screeching around her, but it wasn’t until one of them started pulling on her right ear did she notice them! Suddenly Vera woke up from her daydreaming and realised what’s happening. Now what the other animals didn’t know about Vera, was that she was a very intelligent baby. All the time she was alone silently staring, she was thinking about…everything. All that practiced thinking, made her quickly think of a way to save herself. She asked the birds, who were still watching over her together with the other animals to bend down a very heavy tree branch for her to hold on to with her little trunk. The animals quickly worked together and just as Vera was about to disappear around the far corner of the lake, they pushed the longest tree branch they could find down towards the water. A few minutes of total silence fell over everyone at the shore when they couldn’t see if the branch reached Vera as she began to hide from their view around the corner….
Suddenly they saw big curious eyes staring back at them as Vera slid over the branch! The animals and birds shouted all together happily “She made it!! She’s Safe! Vera’s back!! Yaaay!!”
Now you would think Vera learnt her lesson and payed closer attention to the world around her, but the sky was just too beautiful for Vera to care to look anywhere else. That never changed and Vera’s family & friends loved her just as she was so instead of trying to change her, Vera’s friends learnt how to make her listen! Ever since the lake incident, everyone learnt that to get her attention, all they had to do was gently squeeze Vera’s right ear and she would squeal back at them!
So please accept Vera as she is into your loving family and remember…all you have to do to get her attention, is squeeze her right ear “gently” 😉