AN ELEPHANT'S CUNNING

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 24, 1882

AN ELEPHANT'S CUNNING.

The morality of an elephant is even a more curious study than his sagacity. A gentleman in Rangoon bought three young elephants to send to England. They are said to be very tame, cunning, and playful. They know it is wrong to steal paddy (unhusked rice), and although they know where it is kept, they will not touch it themselves, but when the boys go to see them, they will come up and coil their little trunks around the arm of a boy, and pull him along to the stable, and up to the paddy bag, and make a cat's paw of the boy's hand until he takes up a handful of paddy. Then he lets go of the arm, and turns up the end of his trunk, opens it like a cup, and most coaxingly invites the boy to drop in the paddy. If the boy puts it back into the bag he instantly seizes his arm again, and makes him try once more, until he gets the paddy in his trunk, then he doubles his trunk under, opens his mouth, and blows the paddy out into his mouth, and scampers off, feeling as jolly as a country boy does when he thinks he has done a cunning thing.