Umboo, the Elephant

by Howard Roger Garis

When he looked all around among the trees, which were dripping water from the heavy rain, and when he could not see any of the other elephants, Umboo felt very badly indeed. For animals, even those who live in the jungle, get lonesome, the same as you boys and girls do when you go away from home.

"Well, if I am lost," thought Umboo to himself, as he held the branch of palm nuts, "I must see if I can not find the way home." For though elephants have no real home, traveling as they do to and fro in the jungle so much, Umboo called "home" the place where he had last seen his mother and the rest of the herd.

Since Umboo could not see a long way through the trees, as he might have done if he had eyes as sharp and bright as a big vulture bird, he had to do what most elephants do—smell. So he raised his trunk in the air, dropping the palm branch to the ground, and sniffed as hard as he could. He wanted to smell the elephant smell—the odor that would come from the herd of the big animals who were somewhere in the jungle eating leaves and bark.

But Umboo could not smell them. Nor could he smell any danger, and he was glad of that.

All the smells that came to him were those of the jungle—the soft mud smell, the odor of wet, green leaves and the smell of the falling rain. All those smells Umboo knew and loved. But he could not smell the other elephants, and if he could have done so he would have known which way to walk to get to them.

Slowly he turned himself around, so as to smell each way the wind blew, toward him and from him. But it was of no use. No elephant smell came to him.

"I guess I am too far away," thought the elephant boy to himself. "I must walk on farther. Then I'll come to where my mother is. I wish I had not gone away from her."

Picking up the palm branch again, with the sweet nuts still fast to it, Umboo started off once more through the mud and water. The rain came down harder than ever, but he did not mind that. It washed his skin of the dried mud and dust that had been on it some time, and when it rained the bugs did not bite so much. Also the rain was not cold, for it was pleasant and warm in the jungle. Only it was lonesome to the elephant boy, who, never before, had been so long away from his mother.

On he tramped, splashing this way and that through the puddles, wading through little brooks and, once, even swimming over a small river, for, by this time Umboo was as good a swimmer as the other elephants.

"But I don't remember swimming that river before," said Umboo to himself, as he crawled out on the farther bank, with the branch of palm nuts held high in his trunk. "Surely I must have come the wrong way. I am worse lost than ever!"