STORY FOR CHILDREN: Ants to the rescue of a baby elephant!

After a prolonged bath in the river Kaveri a small herd of elephants under the leadership of Gangama the great grandmother elephant, stole into a sugar cane field and started munching juicy sugarcanes. Once they had their fill they began their trek back home. The happy procession was led by twin baby elephants walking holding each other's trunks. Adult elephants walked behind them .

Suddenly one of the leading babies stopped. "What happened? why this sudden brake?" asked the other. "Look," exclaimed the first one, its trunk pointing at a big procession of ants, thousands and thousands of them columns and columns of them. They were marching across the path with military precision.

"We should wait till these ants finish crossing the path. Otherwise thousands of them will die crushed under our feet. We are elephants we cannot jump across like deer."

Grandma elephant agreed but other adult elephants protested saying "Why should elephants care for ants? In fact these creatures are our deadly enemies. You all know what will happen if they get into our ears."

At the end of an argument that followed, grandma elephant's words prevailed. The herd waited for an hour till the last of the ant army marched past across the path. The commander ant at the tail end of the parade paused a bit and saluted the baby elephants.

Months rolled by since this incident when a gang of poachers entered the forest. Their mission was to capture a baby elephant for a circus. They searched the jungles night and day. By a quirk of fate they spotted a baby elephant that strayed from its herd exactly where the other day the herd of elephants led by Ganga the grandma waited for an army of elephants to cross the game trail.

It took the poachers hardly half an hour to catch the baby and bind it with a rope to a tree and leave the scene to arrange a vehicle for transport.

This baby was one of the twins that belonged to the herd of Gangama. The whole drama was witnessed by some of the very ants which were allowed to cross the forest path the other day by the gracious elephant herd of Ganga the grandma elephant.

They rushed to their nearby ant hill and rushed back to the spot bringing with them an army of angry fellow ants. An intuition told them that the poor baby imprisoned by poachers was none other than twins that actually spotted them and alerted their elders.

The rope that bound the baby to a tree trunk was no doubt very strong., but it was nothing in front of a thousand resolute ants. They just gnawed it and made it threadbare in no time. The baby freed itself and gleefully made for the banyan tree where the herd of Ganga was camping. The rescuers marched triumphantly back to their anthill residence feeling very proud of themselves.

This incredible story of ants rescuing a baby elephant spread far and wide and became the talk of the jungle.