Once an elephant, while clomping through the jungle, stopped short on hearing a cry of someone underneath. He looked down to find a mouse whose tail he had stepped on. The mouse, writhing in pain, asked the elephant to step back and say sorry to him. The elephant, visibly amused at the small creature's audacity refused to budge. He, instead, asked the mouse whether he was new to the jungle and was unaware of the size and might of a magnificent animal like him. An elephant, he said, had enough strength even to rout a lion. He, being a puny mouse, would be trampled in no time, if he wanted to. The mouse, looking in the eye of the elephant, his face up, dared the elephant to trample him. He warned him that the moment he lifted his foot off his tail, he'd scamper away.

Soon, both saw a monkey swinging frantically off the branches of trees wildly crying out that a forest fire had broken out and the wind was spreading it fast.

The elephant, visibly startled, happened to loosen his toehold on the mouse's tail. The mouse immediately set himself free.

The mouse asked the elephant as to how he planned to save his skin, as his own size and might would not allow him to move fast enough to escape the fire. The lion is fast enough to move to a safe refuge, the monkey shall swing away to safety and I would burrow underneath the ground and be there till the fire stops. The elephant, having realised, that every creature's endowments are respect-worthy, repented and said sorry to the mouse. Dejected, the elephant, headed away from that place.

The mouse whistled, calling out to a woodpecker flying high, to inform him the passage the wind had caused the fire to take.

The mouse whistled again and let the elephant be known that he was heading in the direction of the fire and he needed to take the opposite direction.