“Let’s play hide and seek, little bunny,” the weasel said one day.
- Wonderful! “I’ll be happy to play with you,” answered the hare.
“Whichever of us hides better so that the other doesn’t find him will win,” says the weasel.
“So much the better,” the hare laughs loudly. “I can hide so well that not a single hunter will find me.”
“So, let’s begin,” exclaimed the weasel.
-Who's first? - asked the hare.
“We will both start the game at the same time,” said the weasel, “but remember: none of us has the right to spy on the other.”
The weasel had barely walked a few steps to hide in the bushes when the hare had already turned his head, and when the hare was already approaching his shelter, the weasel followed him with his eyes.
Word for word - and it came to a quarrel.
- You were the first to look back! - the hare shouted.
- It's not true! “You were the one spying on me,” the weasel shouted.
In the end, they agreed this way: first the weasel would hide, and the hare would look for her, and then she would look for the hidden hare.
- Let's begin! - they exclaimed together. The weasel quickly rushed into the forest, dug a hole for herself and was about to shout: “One, two, three!”, when suddenly the thought came to her: “What if I climb into the hole and only expose my teeth from it? That will be fun! Never in my life will the hare find me.” I did it as I intended.
“One, two, three,” the hare hears and let’s gallop after the caress. He searches and searches for her, but cannot find her. Suddenly, from afar, he sees little white roots crawling out from under the ground. The hare looked at them from the right, from the left, and carefully tiptoed up, keeping his distance just in case. What could this be? Teeth? Indeed, teeth grow from the ground! Well, no one has heard or seen such a thing since the white light has existed.
The bunny got scared, folded his ears on top of his head and listened, and then he rushed away from these teeth.
- What's wrong with you, bunny? - the elephant asks him. - Why are you running away like that?
- Ah, Your Majesty! I saw something terrible in the forest. Never in my life have I seen such a terrible thing, at the very thought of which I begin to tremble.
- What is this, tell me, bunny. This is very interesting to me,” the elephant trumpeted.
— Teeth grow out of the ground there.
“I’m already over a hundred years old,” the elephant trumpeted, “and I’ve never heard of teeth growing out of the ground.” Tru-ru-ru... Teeth from the earth?
He was surprised so loudly that he was heard by a buffalo who was grazing nearby.
He rushed as fast as he could and asked:
What happened, Your Majesty? Probably something important if you blew the trumpet so loudly?
“Yes,” said the elephant, “imagine, in our forest, teeth grow from the ground.” I'm so amazed that I can hardly gather my thoughts. Yes, yes, teeth, and, moreover, long ones, like bamboo trunks.
“No, no, they’re not that big,” the bunny squeaked barely audibly.
“I’ve been living in this jungle for more than a hundred years,” the elephant continued to trumpet, “and I’ve never heard anything like this!” Have you ever seen this thing - teeth grow straight from the ground!
“And I have never seen anything like this before,” the buffalo shouted, so loudly that it was heard by the wild boar, who immediately ran to find out what had happened.
- To what do I owe such happiness that Your Dignity roared so loudly? - asks the boar, bowing low to the buffalo.
- Do you know that teeth, long as vines, grow from our soil? - the buffalo shouted to him.
The boar grunted so loudly in surprise that the antelope immediately jumped up in several leaps.
- My lord, what happened? What is it that upsets you so much?
- Oh, misfortune, misfortune! Teeth grow from our soil! - the boar moaned.
“I haven’t heard about this since I’ve been alive.” Neither my parents nor my grandparents ever told me about anything like this, that teeth would grow out of the ground. Yes, this is simply incredible!
“I think,” the antelope continued, “that we should go into the jungle and investigate this matter better on the spot.”
“You’re right, go, go there, and then you’ll tell us everything!” - the elephant, buffalo and wild boar shouted in one voice.
- Yes, it’s good for you to say: “Go there.” After all, I am weaker than you, I will not be able to defend myself from enemies. You better go, you are so strong, powerful, not like I am a poor, weak, gentle antelope.
“I would love to go see and look at everything,” the leopard intervened, “but after yesterday’s fight my back hurts so much that I can hardly move.”
“It’s easy to say, ‘go, see, examine,’” the elephant intervened. - Or maybe this is some kind of witchcraft? No, it's not as simple as you think. Before going there, we need to discuss together where we will start our hike and who should go first and who should go last.
And the elephant, along with the buffalo, wild boar, leopard and other animals, opened the council.
And our bunny sat and listened all the time, quietly hiding by the bush.
- What's wrong with you, bunny? What scared you? - asked him the turtle, who was just trundling past at that time.
“Ah,” muttered the hare, trembling all over. “I saw teeth growing out of the ground in our forest.” But - shh! Quiet! Now there is a council of our main bosses. They will decide who should go there first.
- Could you show me this place? - asked the turtle.
- I'm afraid, I'm very afraid, very, very! - the hare moaned.
“At least show me from afar where it is.” In the meantime, let them consult. Don't be afraid, you are completely safe with me.
- Okay, I'll show you. But from afar,” the bunny whispered. When they were already close to the hole where the weasel was hiding, the hare screamed at the top of his lungs:
- There, there! Do you see? Teeth grow from the ground! - And he ran away as fast as he could.
And the turtle slowly crawled to the hole, looked, saw that it was just the teeth of a weasel, and, grabbing it with its paws, hid it in the hunting bag that it carried on its back.
- Bunny! Bunny! It seemed to you that there were no teeth here. Go and see for yourself.
The hare looks from afar and doesn’t believe his eyes. Indeed, no teeth stick out of the ground anymore.
- Where are they? After all, I didn’t dream, I saw them perfectly with my own eyes.
“You probably imagined it,” the turtle reassured him. - Well, now let's get back to everyone.
The turtle and the bunny returned to the clearing, where the strongest of the strongest from all over the animal kingdom gathered for a council. But they were so engrossed in discussing the upcoming campaign that they didn’t even pay attention to the new arrivals.
- Dear Sirs! - said the turtle. - Do me a favor, come visit me. I have excellent beer, cassava roots and palm wine.
The animals, tired of speeches at a protracted meeting, willingly accepted the turtle’s invitation. With pleasure they ate the roots of a delicious herb - cassava, and took a sip of wine, but not just one or two at a time. But they still can't stop talking about teeth growing out of the ground.
“And what is happening in this world,” the elephant shook his head, “that even teeth begin to grow from the ground.” Well, well!
Meanwhile, the weasel that the turtle released calmly got out of the bag, grabbed his sides with his paws and started laughing.
- Ha, ha, ha! That's the story! Ha, ha, ha! No, I can’t, I might burst from laughing, and that’s all! Well, you are stupid, my dears! And how could you believe the nonsense that the deceiving hare was talking about? Teeth grow out of the ground! Ha, ha, ha! No, this really goes beyond all boundaries. And the one who fell for it is the elephant himself, His Majesty, the Honorable Buffalo. Great boar! And the Sovereign Leopard himself! Do you want to know how it really happened? The bunny and I played hide and seek. I hid in a hole and only stuck my teeth out of the hole. The hare saw them from afar and, well, shouted: “Teeth from the earth! Teeth from the earth! Teeth growing from the earth.” Ha, ha, ha! Here are your teeth from the earth!
- What is that weasel saying there? - the animals shouted. “How dare she deceive us, the lords of the forests!” No, we cannot allow this! This liar has loosened her tongue too much! Are teeth not growing out of the ground? Have you seen anything like this? But our great-grandfathers told us about this, but she, you see, wanted to be the smartest!
So the elephant trumpeted the whole jungle out of resentment, and the buffalo mooed, the leopard snorted, and only the antelope looked at everyone with its gentle eyes and said:
“I can’t understand anything in all of this, well, nothing at all!”
And the poor weasel would not have escaped trouble - she would have paid with her life for her speech if she had not been so cunning. Seeing what was going on, she gave in and that was all they saw.
“You see,” the bunny turned to the turtle. -My truth has come out! I said that teeth grow from the ground. And they grow!
- Uh! - the turtle waved his paw, - why talk to fools!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru