Elephant Comes Home

Elephant comes home expecting a suprise birthday party, but finds everyone missing.

Once there was an elephant that worked very hard. He was good at his job. He built websites for people who couldn’t do it themselves. He made them look pretty.

He was a great big elephant. His trunk was very long, his tusks were very white and his tail was just the right length to flick birds off his back.

Well, one day, he was very happy to be arriving home. More than any other day, because it was his birthday, and his family told him to hurry up and get home, they had a surprise for him.

When he got home, he trumpeted his trunk.

“I’m home,” he yelled out.

He put down his briefcase on the kitchen table and undid his tie. He noticed no one had answered him.

“Hello?” he called out. “I’m home!”

He was fully expecting everyone to jump out from behind the counter, so he strolled over to the counter, making sure to make all sorts of noise on the way there. When he got there, he leaned over the counter, and no one was there.

He was confused. He decided to check the bathtubs, the closets, the attic, the cupboards and under the beds. No one was home. This was strange. They knew it was his birthday.

He began looking for a note or something telling him where they had all gone. He couldn’t find anything. Not on the dry-erase board, not on the notepad, nothing.

He scratched his head and looked out the back door.

“Maybe they went to the tree house,” he said to himself.

So he swung open the door and walked toward the tree house.

When he got to the tree house, he listened for noises, but there were none. He climbed up to the first level and it looked undisturbed, just as it had a few days ago. No one had been up there in a few days.

He climbed down and wondered if they had gone to Grass Field. The grass was high this time of year and it was fun to walk around in the tall grass.

He walked toward the field, but had to wade across the creek.

Once he was on the other side of the creek, there was Grass Field, just over a small hill.

He looked all around, but the field was untouched. No one had been running around in it. No trails were carved out. He started to wonder if he would find them at all.

“Oh,” he exclaimed. “Big Rock.”

Big Rock was another family favorite. It was a large rock with a small cave on one side and a flat top to hang out…if you could get up there.

Daddy Elephant and the girls could get up there, but Momma Elephant and the twins couldn’t. Well, Momma Elephant could probably get up, maybe with a boost.

So he trotted off toward Big Rock. He had to get to the far side of Grass Field, and then cross Thorny Bush Grove to get there, and wow, did they scratch up his legs. Even when he was extra careful, he always seemed to get poked and snagged. Today was no exception.

Once through Thorny Bush Grove, he got to Big Rock. He ran around to the other side, but no one was there. He tried to climb to the top, but was a bit tired from the tree house climb, so he settled on feeling around with his trunk. No one was hiding up there either.

Elephant felt like crying a little. He didn’t, but he felt like it.

“Oh,” he yelped. “Watering Hole.”

Watering Hole was a bit further away, and he had to either go around the hill, which was actually two hills shaped like a bottom, or take the short cut, which was over the top of it, between the hills. Everyone called it “Bottom Hill.”

He decided to take the shortcut. He was getting tired, but he was also starting to worry about his family. Where could they have gone? Had some emergency happened? Did they forget his birthday altogether?

He got to the top of Bottom Hill, but you can’t quite see the whole of Watering Hole from the top of the hill, so he galloped down to the water.

They weren’t there either. He was out of ideas. He took a little drink as he hung his head.

That’s when he noticed footprints.

In fact, there were footprints all around Watering Hole. There was Momma footprints, two little girl elephant footprints, and a couple of baby elephant footprints.

The footprints were still wet. They had just been made. Oh, he was happy.

He swung his head around and saw that the footprints went around Watering Hole, and then went the long way around Bottom Hill.

He immediately started running, following the footsteps around Bottom Hill, hoping his family was just around the bend,

They weren’t, but the footprints turned to mud prints, and the mud prints led to Big Rock.

He kept following them.

Finally, he arrived at Big Rock, but no one was there either. He walked around to the cave, but found no one. He felt around the top of Big Rock with his trunk just in case, and he felt something.

“What’s this?” he wondered aloud.

It was soft, and it rattled a little. It was one of the twin’s dollies!

He grabbed it and brought it down to inspect it. It was clean and smelled just like his little twin girl. He was sure it hadn’t been there when he checked earlier.

He was certain he had felt around all over the top of Big Rock when he was here before.

He checked again, just in case there was something else up there. As he was straining to feel all the way to the other side of the rock, he was able to wedge his back toe into a crevice in the rock and push himself a little higher. That’s when he noticed that a path had been made through Grass Field. (You could see over Thorny Bush Grove if you were on Big Rock).

He jumped down with a “THUD”, and jogged over to Thorny Bush Grove. He was not looking forward to the pokes and scrapes and snags from the thorny vines in the grove, but he had to get to Grass Field.

When he got to Thorny Bush Grove, he was surprised to find there was a path that hadn’t been there before. Like someone had pushed all the thorny bushes away from the path so as to not snag and poke the big Daddy Elephant.

So he went right through Thorny Bush Grove with no snags or pokes or scrapes. He was happy about that. He was still kind of itchy from when he went through on the way down.

Well, Grass Field was even more of a surprise. He had remembered that he had run through the field earlier today, and maybe that was the trail he saw from Big Rock. But no, what he saw was a set of trails. A large one that went straight and two smaller ones that wound and twisted all over the place.

Big Daddy Elephant followed the big one, but laughed as he passed the twisting curvy ones. They really were all over the place.

As he reached the edge of Grass Field, he could see the creek and the tree house just beyond.

As he waded through the creek, he noticed the tree house was swaying and many of the branches were leaning way over, almost touching the ground. He smiled.

And as he got closer to the tree house, his smile got bigger. He could hear giggling and grunting and someone saying, “Ow, you’re stepping on my ear!”

Then a larger voice saying, “Sweetie, she didn’t mean to,” when he was just under the branches.

Then another small voice, “Sorry, sister,” as he approached the trunk of the tree.

They hadn’t noticed he was there until he lifted his trunk with the dolly in it, and the little girl twin, noticing it first, said, “Dolly!” as she grabbed it.

“Daddy!” they all yelled. “Happy birthday!” And they all trumpeted their trunks.

“Come on up, dear,” said Momma Elephant.

“We’ve got a surprise for you,” said the oldest girl.

Daddy Elephant climbed up the trunk, and when he got to the top, he was so surprised by what he saw. So surprised that he forgot he had been worried about them just a few minutes ago.

There were boxes and boxes of pizza, gallons of ice cream, tall glasses of iced coffee drinks, pitchers full to the top with Hawaiian Punch, large bowls full of cashews, trays of Li’l Smokies with toothpicks sticking out of all of them, buckets of peanut butter with tons of chocolate chips mixed in, loaves of whole wheat banana bread with chocolate chips and some Puerto Rican “pasteles” with rice and beans. All of his favorites were organized wonderfully on the table at the far end of the tree house.

Then the girls held up little cards they had made that said “Good for one really, really long back scratch on all the hairy parts.” And “This coupon entitles you to one foot rub for each of your four feet.”

Momma Elephant had a card too, but she didn’t want to show daddy Elephant what it said at the moment.

The twins hugged his front legs as hard as they could.

They ate and drank and sang songs all night. Then Momma Elephant went inside and brought back pillows and blankets, and they all slept in the tree house.

The End