But Umboo's big feet were made for walking in mud and water, and his thick skin, though bugs could bite through it at times, did not let any rain leak through to wet him. There was plenty on the outside, however, just as there is outside your rubber coat.
"I'll just go off by myself and knock a great big tree over with my head," thought Umboo. "Then the other elephants will see what I can do. I wonder if it will be easy, on account of the ground being soft from the rain?"
On and on through the jungle wandered Umboo. He was big enough to travel by himself now, though of course he did not want to leave his mother, nor the herd, which was like home to him. He was one of a big family of elephants, some being his sisters, his brothers or his cousins.
All around him, through the forest, Umboo could hear the other elephants crashing about in the wet. They were looking for good things to eat, and none of them went very far away from the others. They wanted to be near where they could hear Tusker sound his trumpet call of danger, if he had to do so.
But Umboo being young, and perhaps rather foolish, thought he could go off as far as he pleased into the jungle.
"I can find my way back again, after I have knocked over a big tree," he thought to himself. "It will be easy."
The elephant boy saw several trees with bunches of palm nuts on them, but none was large enough for him. He wanted to pick out an extra large one; not as big, of course, as his mother or father or Tusker could have butted over, but still one bigger than the other trees he had been used to knocking down.
At last, when he had tramped on quite a distance through the mud and water of the jungle, Umboo saw before him a fine, large palm tree. Growing in the top, so far up that he could not reach any except the very lowest, and littlest, ones, were a number of clusters of palm nuts.
"Ah! That's the tree I'll knock down!" thought Umboo.
He went up to it, and looked at the ground around the roots. It was soft and spongy as he stepped on it, and water oozed out.