I MET A "HEFOLUMP"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 25, 15 December 1939, Page 34

I MET A "HEFOLUMP"

HIS is a picture of a " Hefolump." : How he got there I don’t know yet: I met him in the middle of a bridge-walking very slowly and carefully and not-caringly, and pretending that he hadn’t any idea of the lines of traffic behind him. And that’s one of the good things about being an elephantnobody can make you hurry. _When I met this elephant in the middle of the bridge I jumped out of my car and shouted "Hi! Hi!" But he didn’t take the smallest littlest bit of notice. I was just another horrible traffic noise unless I knew the password — and of. course I didn’t. But luckily there was a keeper with him. Not &@ Zoo-kind of man in a blue uniform with shiny. buttons and a peaked cap, but a tall Circus kind of man. with too-short trousers and red hair sticking through his hat: And he knew the password and they both stopped at once. The elephant turned right round and blinked his small moist

eye at me and flapped his ears and lifted up his trunk. And just at that very moment the school bell rang and out came the children running and pushing and tumbling. They swarmed to the fence and shouted and called and chattered like a whole Zoo full of monkeys. And the elephant smiled happily. He thought he was back in the Jungle! And one of the children threw. a crust of his lunch and I dropped it very carefully into that greedy snuffling trunk, You all know the "hefolump" that was the great good friend of "Ee-or" and "Kanga" and piglet in "The House at Pooh Corner"? And when you're big you'll know other story elephants--the one that belonged to Toomai, the Elephant Boy-and another who stood stock still in the middle of a very narrow bridge-much narrower than mine-and refused to budge so much as an inch until his own master came. The soldiers behind him pleaded and prodded but simply nothing happened.

Only a huge bellow-calling, calling, the master who wasn’t there. And at last they gave up hope and settled down in their long lines to camp for the night. But away in a tent the master lay with fever and, at last nearing the bellowing call of his good friend the elephant, he leaped out of bed and came running in his pyjamas. And when the elephant saw him he bellowed again and hooted with joy and lifted the man up on to his neck and moved on. This, also, is a story you'll find in Kipling when you are old enough to read what he writes of India. And that’s all. Except that our one’s name is "Sheila." : Teeny frrncha™