--- title: Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?) — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?)», a lesson of the books course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Long ago elephants had no trunk, only a bulgy nose as big as a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/) / Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5:… # Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?) Lesson 79 of the books course of Mova's primary school: 24 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/0/) — Long ago elephants had no trunk, only a bulgy nose as big as a boot, and one young Elephant's Child was so full of "'satiable curtiosity" (endless curiosity) that he asked everybody questions, and all his aunts and uncles spanked him for it. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/1/) — One morning he asks the one question nobody dares to answer, "What does the Crocodile have for dinner?", and the Kolokolo Bird tells him to go and find out at the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/2/) — He packs bananas, sugar-cane and melons, says goodbye, and walks across Africa, dropping melon rind all the way because he cannot pick anything up with his little nose. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/3/) — At the river a Python-Rock-Snake spanks him too, and then he steps on a "log" that is really the Crocodile, which winks, weeps fake tears and says "Come hither, Little One... - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/4/) — The trusting Elephant's Child leans close, and the Crocodile grabs him by the nose and says he will begin his dinner with Elephant's Child: the part ends with a funny squashed-nose cry for help and a real danger. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/5/) — "In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant ... had no trunk", only "a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot" that he could wriggle but not pick things up with. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/6/) — "'Satiable curtiosity" is Kipling's baby-talk for "insatiable curiosity", wanting to know things so much that you are never satisfied. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/7/) — He asked his tall aunt the Ostrich about her tail-feathers, his tall uncle the Giraffe why his skin was spotty, his broad aunt the Hippopotamus why her eyes were red, and his hairy uncle the Baboon why melons tasted just so; each one spanked him. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/8/) — In old stories grown-ups spank children all the time; today we know that hitting children is wrong, and Kipling makes it silly on purpose. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/9/) — His new question, "What does the Crocodile have for dinner?", made everybody say "Hush!" "in a loud and dretful tone" ("dretful" = dreadful). - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/10/) — The Kolokolo Bird, sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thorn-bush (a thorny African bush that catches at you), said: "Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out." - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/11/) — He took "a hundred pounds of bananas (the little short red kind)", "a hundred pounds of sugar-cane (the long purple kind)", and "seventeen melons (the greeny-crackly kind)". - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/12/) — His families "spanked him once more for luck", and he went off "a little warm, but not at all astonished", "throwing the rind about, because he could not pick it up". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/13/) — He went from Graham's Town to Kimberley and to Khama's Country (real places in South Africa and Botswana), and till that day he "had never seen a Crocodile, and did not know what one was like". - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/14/) — The "Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake" answered "in a voice of dretful scorn", "Have I seen a Crocodile? - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/15/) — What will you ask me next?", and spanked him "with his scalesome, flailsome tail"; the Elephant's Child, who was always most polite and began his questions with "'Scuse me", said "I suppose this is the same thing" (another spanking for asking) and politely helped coil him up on his rock again. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/16/) — He trod on "what he thought was a log of wood", but it was the Crocodile, who "winked one eye--like this!", then winked the other eye and lifted half his tail out of the mud, and "wept crocodile-tears to show it was quite true". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/17/) — "Crocodile tears" means pretend sadness; real crocodiles do make tears, but only to keep their eyes wet, not because they feel sorry. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/18/) — The Crocodile caught him "by his little nose" and said "between his teeth" that "to-day I will begin with Elephant's Child!"; with his nose squeezed, the Elephant's Child cried "Led go! - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/19/) — You are hurtig be!" (Let go! - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/20/) — You are hurting me!). - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/21/) — Real places and creatures: the Limpopo is a real river in southern Africa; fever trees are real yellow-barked trees of wet ground, named long ago because people near them caught fever (malaria) from mosquitoes; the African rock python is Africa's biggest snake. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/22/) — Real biology: Nile crocodiles really do lie still like logs at the water's edge and ambush animals that come to drink, even big ones; that is why going close to a crocodile is truly dangerous. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/23/) — The "Precession of the Equinoxes" is a real, very slow wobble of the Earth that takes about 26,000 years, so saying something happened "in the middle of" it one morning is Kipling's joke. - ← previous: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 4: How the Leopard got his Spots, part 2 (One, two, three, and where's your breakfast?)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/78-justso-leopard-spots-2/) - next →: [Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 2 (the tug-of-war and the trunk)](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/80-justso-elephants-child-2/) - ↑ back to [Books](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/)