SHORT STORIES FROM THE
PUBLIC DOMAIN
HOW THE LEOPARD GOT ITS
SPOTS
Editor’s Note: This is a very clever essay on the art
of reinvention disguised as a
children’s fable
In the
days when everybody started fair, Best Beloved, the Leopard
lived in a place called the
High Veldt. 'Member it wasn't the Low Veldt,
or the Bush Veldt, or the
Sour Veldt, but the 'sclusively bare, hot
shiny High Veldt, where
there was sand and sandy-coloured rock and
'sclusively tufts of sandy-yellowish
grass.
The Giraffe and the Zebra
and the Eland and the Koodoo and the
Hartebeest lived there: and
they were 'sclusively sandy-yellow-brownish
all over; but the Leopard,
he was the 'sclusivest sandiest-yellowest-
brownest of them all -- a
greyish-yellowish catty-shaped kind of beast,
and he matched the
'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish colour of
the High Veldt to one hair.
AUTHOR: Nobel
Prize winner in literature Joseph
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was an English
short-story
writer, poet, and novelist. He is chiefly remembered for
his tales
and poems of British soldiers in India and his
“Jungle Book” tales for
children.
_____________
This was
very bad for the Giraffe and the Zebra and
the rest of them:for he would lie down by a
'sclusively yellowish-greyish-brownish stone
or clump of grass, and when
the Giraffe or the
Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the
Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome
lives. He would indeed!
Zebra or the Eland or the Koodoo or the Bush-Buck or the
Bonte-Buck came by he would surprise them out of their jumpsome
lives. He would indeed!
And, also, there was an
Ethiopian with bows and arrows (a 'sclusively
greyish-brownish-yellowish
man he was then), who lived on the High
Veldt with the Leopard: and
the two used to hunt together -- the
Ethiopian with his bows and
arrows, and the Leopard 'sclusively with
his teeth and claws -- till
the Giraffe and the Eland and the Koodoo and
the Quagga and all the rest
of them didn't know which way to jump,
Best Beloved. They didn't indeed!
After a long time -- things
lived for ever so long in those days -- they
learned to avoid anything
that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian:
and bit by bit -- the
Giraffe began it, because his legs were the longest
-- they went away from the
High Veldt. They scuttled for days and days
till they came to a great
forest, 'sclusively full of trees and bushes and
stripy, speckly,
patchy-blatchy shadows, and there they hid: and after
another long time, what with
standing half in the shade and half out of
it, and what with the
slippery-slidy shadows of the trees falling on them,
the Giraffe grew blotchy,
and the Zebra grew stripy, and the Eland and
the Koodoo grew darker, with
little wavy grey lines on their backs like
bark on a tree-trunk: and
so, though you could hear them and smell
them, you could very seldom
see them, and then only when you knew
precisely where to look.
They had a beautiful time in
the 'sclusively
speckly-spickly shadows of
the forest, while the Leopard and the
Ethiopian ran about over the
'sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish
High Veldt outside,
wondering where all their breakfasts and their
dinners and their teas had
gone. At last they were so hungry that they
ate rats and beetles and
rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian,
and then they had the Big
Tummy-ache, both together: and then they
met Baviaan -- the
dog-headed, barking baboon, who is Quite the
Wisest Animal in All South
Africa.
Said the Leopard to Baviaan
(and it was a very hot day), 'Where has all
the game gone?'
And
Baviaan winked. He knew.
Said Ethiopian to Baviaan,
'Can you tell me the present habitat of the
aboriginal Fauna?' (That meant just
the same thing, but the Ethiopian
always used long words. He
was a grown-up.)
And Baviaan winked. He knew.
Then said Baviaan, 'The game
has gone into other spots: and my advice
to you, Leopard, is to go
into other spots as soon as you can.'
And the Ethiopian said,
'That is all very fine, but I wish to know where
the aboriginal Fauna has
migrated.'
Then said Baviaan, 'The
aboriginal Fauna has joined the aboriginal
Flora because it was high
time for a change; and my advice to you,
Ethiopian, is to change as
soon as you can.'
That puzzled the Leopard and
the Ethiopian, but they set off to look
for the aboriginal Flora,
and presently, after ever so many days, they
saw a great, high, tall
forest full of tree-trunks all 'sclusively
speckled and sprottled and
spottled, dotted and splashed and slashed
and hatched and
cross-hatched with shadows. (Say that quickly aloud,
and you will see how very
shadowy the forest must have been.)
'What is this,' said the
Leopard, 'that is so 'sclusively dark, and
yet so full of little pieces
of light?'
'I don't know,' said the
Ethiopian, 'but it ought to be the aboriginal
Flora. I can smell Giraffe,
and I can hear Giraffe, but I can't see
Giraffe.'
'That's curious,' said the
Leopard. 'I suppose it is because we have
just come in out of the
sunshine. I can smell Zebra, and I can hear
Zebra, but I can't see
Zebra.'
'Wait a bit,' said the
Ethiopian. 'It's a long time since we've hunted
'em. Perhaps we've forgotten
what they were like.'
'Fiddle!' said the Leopard. I remember them perfectly on the High
Veldt, especially their
marrow- bones. Giraffe is about 17 feet high,
of a 'sclusively fulvous
golden-yellow from head to heel: and Zebra
is about 4.5 feet high, of a
'sclusively grey-fawn colour from
head to heel.'
'Umm,' said the Ethiopian,
looking into the speckly-spickly
shadows of the aboriginal
Flora-forest. 'Then they ought to show
up in this dark place like
ripe bananas in a smoke-house.'
But they didn't. The Leopard
and the Ethiopian hunted all day;
and though they could smell
them and hear them, they never saw
one of them.
'For goodness' sake,' said
the Leopard at tea-time, 'let us wait till it
gets dark. This daylight
hunting is a perfect scandal.'
So they waited till dark,
and then the Leopard heard something
breathing sniffily in the
starlight that fell all stripy through the
branches, and he jumped at
the noise, and it smelt like Zebra,
and it felt like Zebra, and
when he knocked it down it kicked like
Zebra, but he couldn't see
it. So he said, 'Be quiet, O you person
without any form. I am going
to sit on your head till morning,
because there is something
about you that I don't understand.'
Presently he heard a grunt
and a crash and a scramble, and the
Ethiopian called out, 'I've
caught a thing that I can't see. It smells
like Giraffe, and it kicks
like Giraffe, but it hasn't any form.'
'Don't you trust it, said
the Leopard. 'Sit on its head till the
morning -- same as me. They
haven't any form -- any of 'em.'
So they sat down on them
hard till bright morning-time, and then
Leopard said, 'What have you
at your end of the table, Brother?'
The Ethiopian scratched his
head and said, 'It ought to be
'sclusively a rich fulvous
orange-tawny from head to heel, and it
ought to be Giraffe; but it
is covered all over with chestnut
blotches. What have you at
your end of the table, Brother?'
And the
Leopard scratched his head and said, 'It ought to be
'sclusively a delicate
greyish-fawn, and it ought to be Zebra;
but it is covered all over
with black and purple stripes. What in
the world have you been
doing to yourself, Zebra? Don't you
know that if you were on the
High Veldt I could see you ten
miles off? You haven't any
form.'
'Yes,' said the Zebra, 'but
this isn't the High Veldt.
Can't you see?'
'I can now,' said the
Leopard, 'But I couldn't all yesterday.
How is it done?'
'Let us up,' said the Zebra,
'and we will show you.'
They let the Zebra and the
Giraffe get up; and Zebra moved
away to some little
thorn-bushes where the sunlight fell all
stripy, and the Giraffe
moved off to some tallish trees where the
shadows fell all blotchy. 'Now
watch,' said the Zebra and the
Giraffe. 'This is the way
it's done. One -- two -- three! And
where's your breakfast?'
Leopard stared, and
Ethiopian stared, but all they could see
were stripy shadows and
blotched shadows in the forest, but
never a sign of Zebra and
Giraffe. They had just walked off and
hidden themselves in the
shadowy forest.
'Hi! Hi!' said the Ethiopian. 'That's a trick worth learning. Take
a lesson by it, Leopard. You
show up in this dark place like a bar
of soap in a coal-scuttle.'
'Ho! Ho!' said the Leopard.
'Would it surprise you very much to
know that you show up in
this dark place like a mustard-plaster
on a sack of coals?'
'Well, calling names won't
catch dinner,' said the Ethiopian. 'The
long and the little of it is
that we don't match our backgrounds.
I'm going to take Baviaan's
advice. He told me I ought to change:
and as I've nothing to
change except my skin I'm going to
change that.'
'What to?' said the Leopard,
tremendously excited.
'To a nice working
blackish-brownish colour, with a little purple
in it, and touches of slaty-blue.
It will be the very thing for hiding
in hollows and behind
trees.'
So he changed his skin then
and there, and the Leopard was more
excited than ever: he had
never seen a man change his skin before.
'But what about me?' she
said, when the Ethiopian had worked his
last little finger into his
fine new black skin.
'You take Baviaan's advice
too. He told you to go into spots.'
'So I did,' said the
Leopard. 'I went into other spots as fast as
I could. I went into this
spot with you, and a lot of good it has
done me.'
'Oh,' said the Ethiopian.
'Baviaan didn't mean spots in South Africa.
He meant spots on your
skin.'
'What's the use of that?'
said the Leopard.
'Think of Giraffe,' said the
Ethiopian. 'Or if you prefer stripes,
think of Zebra. They find
their spots and stripes give them perfect
satisfaction.'
'Umm,' said the Leopard. 'I
wouldn't look like Zebra -- not for ever so.'
'Well, make up your mind,'
said the Ethiopian, 'because I'd hate to
go hunting without you, but
I must if you insist on looking like a
sunflower against a tarred
fence.'
'I'll take spots, then,'
said the Leopard; 'but don't make 'em too
vulgar-big. I wouldn't look
like Giraffe -- not for ever so.'
'I'll make 'em with the tips
of my fingers,' said the Ethiopian.
'There's plenty of black
left on my skin still. Stand over!'
Then the Ethiopian put his
five fingers close together (there was
plenty of black left on his
new skin still) and pressed them all over
the Leopard, and wherever
the five fingers touched they left five
little black marks, all
close together. You can see them on any
Leopard's skin you like,
Best Beloved. Sometimes the fingers slipped
and the marks got a little
blurred; but if you look closely at any
Leopard now you will see
that there are always five spots -- off five
black finger-tips.
'Now you are a beauty!' said
the Ethiopian. 'You can lie out on the
bare ground and look like a
heap of pebbles. You can lie out on the
naked rocks and look like a
piece of pudding-stone. You can lie out
on a leafy branch and look
like sunshine sifting through the leaves;
and you can lie right across
the centre of a path and look like nothing
in particular. Think of that
and purr!'
'But if I'm all this,' said
the Leopard, 'why didn't you go spotty too?'
'Oh, plain black's best,'
said the Ethiopian. 'Now come along and
we'll see if we can't get
even with Mr One-Two-Three-Where's-
your-Breakfast!'
So they went away and lived
happily ever afterwards, Best Beloved.
That is all.
Oh, now and then you will
hear grown-ups say, 'Can the Ethiopian
change his skin or the
Leopard his spots?' I don't think even grown-ups
would keep on saying such a
silly thing if the Leopard and the
Ethiopian hadn't done it
once -- do you? But they will never do it
again, Best Beloved. They
are quite contented as they are.
No comments:
Post a Comment