On the shore of the Bering Strait stands the village of Chaplino, and next to it is a mountain. In Eskimo it is called Avsyniom - a mountain moved by a mouse. And I’ll tell you why this is so.
One day a little mouse was thinking under a big burdock tree:
Why is this so - they sing songs about people, tell fairy tales, but never, nothing about mice? People become heroes: fighters, runners, jumpers, shooters, hunters, brave men! And the mice?.. What could I do so that they would sing songs about me and tell fairy tales? At this time, a man walked past the mouse. They did not see each other - one was too big and the other was too small.
“Let me,” the mouse thinks, “I’ll gnaw the tree and take it to this hill, and for this I will become famous among people and mice!” He was gnawing on a tree, gnawing. He gnawed it around, grabbed it and began to swing it from side to side: Oooh! But the tree is not moving. The mouse is working again - gnawing, and suddenly - the tree crackled, tilted and fell.
At first the mouse was scared, and then he looked around proudly and only then saw that he had not knocked down a tree, but a stem of grass. It’s good that no one saw,” the mouse thought bitterly, “otherwise I would have gone to the people’s dugout in the fall, they would have laughed!.. What could I do to become famous? A mouse walks across the tundra and sees big, big lakes. “So I’ll swim across this lake and sit on the other shore to dry my kitchen and backpack. People will pass by, see me and tell each other about me: what a swimmer! - and then they’ll compose a song!” - thought the mouse and swam across the lake.
He swam and swam, dived, almost choked, almost drowned, but still swam. He swam to the shore, went out onto the ground and began to dry himself. And suddenly he sees a man: a man is walking, behind him - his traces remain, the lakes that the mouse swam across. The mouse felt bitter.
Then he approached the hill, put it on his back and carried it to the north. He walked and walked, tired. I saw Chaplino and thought: “I’ll go into the village, drink tea, relax, people will see me, they’ll sing a song about me, they’ll tell me a fairy tale!” He began to lower the hill. A small piece of earth fell off, hit the mouse and killed him.
Since then, they began to tell a fairy tale about a little mouse who wanted to become famous.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru