The Ant and the Elephant

As a kid, one of my favorite books was The Ant and the Elephant. I even used it when I was teaching a class at EFY a billion years ago, to illustrate the theme of the class - by small means can great things come to pass.



But that's not the only theme of The Ant and the Elephant. As I used to always tell my students, that's what makes literature so great. A piece of literature can have a million different meanings, depending on the person reading it.



The book is about an ant who is stranded on a stick in the middle of the river. He asks a passing turtle to help him to the shore, but the turtle doesn't wanna, because he's a brat. He wanders away. Then he tries to climb onto a rock so that he can sun himself, and he falls backward onto his shell and can't get turned around. He asks the horn-billed bird to flip him over, but she says no and flies to her nest. Her egg falls down into the soft ferns below, but it's so big, and her bill is so big, that she can't lift both the egg and herself back up to the nest. She asks the giraffe to lift her egg up, but he says no and wanders away. Then his long legs get all tangled up in a vine. He asks the lion to cut the vines away with his claws, but the lion says no and walks away. He sits next to a big boulder to rest in the shade, and the boulder rolls onto his tail, trapping him. He asks a rhino to shove the boulder off his tail, but the rhino says no and lumbers off. He doesn't see where he's going, and he runs into a stump and can't get his horn out of it. So they're all stuck. Then...an elephant comes along and hears the ant. He reaches with his trunk and moves her to safety. She says thank you and wanders off. Then he comes upon the turtle, who he flips back over. But the turtle doesn't even say thank you. He saves all of the rest of the animals, but none of them say thank you. Then the elephant accidentally falls into a ravine, bottom-first, and he's so wedged in there and can't get out. Then he hears the ant, who has brought a million of her little ant friends, and they wedge down there and get the elephant out, carrying him back to the plateau.



So, you know, you have the theme that I focused on for that EFY class so long ago, but you can also take it to mean that you need to show gratitude, or you need to help others, etc.



When Mom found out that a children's play based on the book was coming to town, she got tickets for me, Nat, Jake, and Dylan. It was really cute. They obviously added lots of songs to make it stretch to an hour. The singers were really good; in fact, I think the guy who played the elephant played Frog in the play we went to last year, A Year with Frog and Toad. It was only a four-man show. Ten billion costume changes. But they did really well.



It's so funny to see the differences between Dylan and Jake. Jake sat and watched the whole show, smiling the whole time. Totally engaged. Dylan kept asking me technical questions: "How did they make fog come out from the sides?" "How did they get that rock to move? Is it attached to a rope or something?" "How are they making those puppets so big?" "How did they get the light to make him look red?" Always wanting to know how things work. He couldn't have cared less about the storyline or the singing or anything. He's so funny. Here we are, with the stage behind us (this was pre-bangs):

Oh, I almost forgot the funniest part of the whole show. When the elephant is going around and saving everyone, he's doing this chant about his trunk: "My trunk, my trunk, my very helpful trunk. My trunk, my trunk, I'll help you with my trunk." And I'm not kidding; it was just like the beat to that song "My Humps," by the Black-Eyed Peas. But I don't think these people did it on purpose. I think it was just a coincidence. Nat and I laughed so hard. I think we were the only people in the audience to see the correlation, because we were the only ones laughing. :) So funny.



Thanks, Mom! Like I've said, without you, I wouldn't get to do anything fun!!!