Week 7 Story: The Snake and the Mouse
Here is the link to this story on my portfolio!
Once upon a time, deep in the Jungle of Asia there was a snake who ruled the jungle. He was big and strong, and could eat anything he wanted. One day the snake was slithering along the jungle floor to the river to find something to eat. A mouse was bathing near the river and saw the snake come slithering his direction. The mouse was frightened and thought to himself "what can I do to defend myself against the snake? I am very small and not strong."
The mouse decided to approach the snake instead of letting the snake come to him.
"Hello" said the mouse.
"Why hello there you delicious looking mouse" smirked the snake. "Is there anything you wish to say before I swallow you up?"
"Why yes there is. Little do you know that I am in fact the most powerful mouse in the jungle." said the mouse as he fluffed out his fur and made himself as big as he could. "I can jump from tree to tree and move faster than you can through the jungle." challenged the mouse.
"Alright, fine we shall have a competition to see who is the fastest and if you win I will not eat you." said the snake.
The race was on and the snake was off to an early lead. He slithered so quickly along the ground that the mouse's tiny legs could not keep up. However, they came up to the river and the snake knew he would drown if he tried to cross, but the mouse jumped across the river using the tree branches and left the snake in the dust.
The snake was in utter disbelief. He had been tricked into challenging the mouse instead of just gobbling him up and now he was left to slither into the dark jungle still hungry.
Author's Note: This story was a spin off the The Tiger and the Frog from this week's unit readings. I obviously changed the animals from a tiger and frog to a snake and mouse. The tiger and the frog both jumped over the river, but in my story the snake simply could not cross so instead of the snake being intimidated by the mouse like the tiger was of the frog, the snake was simply outsmarted. In the tiger and the frog there was a part where they both vomited, but I did not think that was necessary to my story. I hope you like my take on the story!
Bibliography: The Tiger and the Frog by A.L. Shelton as part of the Tibetan Folktales
Image by Pixabay
Howdy Syd!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great retelling! It's extremely well-structured and to the point, textbook definition of "short and sweet." I wish I could write as concisely as you do, I tend to ramble a bit. I also appreciated your changing the characters to a mouse/snake duo instead of frog/tiger. I don't know if it was your intention, but having the characters be a really predator/prey combination makes the story a bit more believable. (did you know frogs often hang out around tigers because they're too small for the tigers to consider them food, but anything big enough to eat a frog is big enough to attract the tiger's attention?)
Hi Sydney!
ReplyDeleteI love a good underdog story. I really liked that you used a mouse and a snake to kind of shake things up a little bit. I agree with Drew when it comes to them actually being prey/predators making the story even more believable. For some reason the first thing I thought of was "Planet Earth" where you root for the prey to get away, but in the end it still hurts the predator because they need food.