A story with giraffes and hippos in it

ostriches too

One morning this week I woke up with a fictional story forming in my mind so during breakfast I hand wrote the story in my sketchbook …

… and since my hand writing was messy and continued for several pages I'll use my fingers to type the story out below, editing and doing some illustrating, also by hand, as I go. I may do more with this story in the future - or not - but it was a fun creative breakfast thing to dabble with this week so here goes:

One day a group of elephants decided that everything they saw in the whole world should be theirs and theirs alone. They shouted at the nearest giraffe “Go home! You giraffes weren't born here in this savannah! You aren't qualified to be here! Go away now!”

The giraffe replied “Giraffes have been here for as long as time itself. See the length of the giraffe neck? We're that experienced in seeing the past, present and future of this land.”

“We're not convinced and we don't believe you.” said the elephants. And nothing the giraffe could say, show or do could convince the elephants of that which they refused to believe. And until the elephants were willing to consider something outside of the preconceived notions in their own minds it was useless to talk to them.

Most of the giraffes, because of their long experience with the world knew this. So the giraffes mostly ignored the elephants and continued on with living a life that included all of the living beings the giraffes encountered. While there were many different views of the world - the birds saw things very differently from the worms for example - most beings were willing to recognize and work with everyone else even when it was hard sometimes. The result was that while things were rarely perfect and most beings didn't get everything they wanted, life still worked pleasantly enough for everyone.

This relative smoothness of life was often attributed to the telescopic ability of the giraffes to see both the small and larger pictures of life as a whole - though it really was due to the cooperative abilities of everyone in the savanna that enabled life to have any smoothness.

Anyway, the elephants fumed and raged and stampeded at the very thought that anyone besides them, the most loyal, noble, serene, the biggest and greatest beings on the Earth, the almighty elephants, should have any good thing. Ever.

“Everything for Elephants!” they'd trumpet.

The elephants refused to understand that the qualities a life has comes from inside each being - their beliefs, ways of thinking and their choices. The elephants also refused to understand that all beings create life together by working cooperatively. But since you cannot help someone understand something that they refuse to even consider, well, all of the giraffes and everyone else simply went on living, navigating difficulties as best they could, making improvements as best they could and enjoying the pleasant things that they enjoyed.

As time passed the elephants got even angrier about not having absolutely everything and not being the center of everyone's attention at all times. According to the elephants this horrible, catastrophic, state of affairs was entirely the fault of the giraffes who educated themselves and other beings about various things in life. And also the fault of the birds who kept crossing across the borders of air in large caravans to find reliable food and nesting places. Oh, and it was the fault of the hippos who wanted safe accessible waterholes.

It was also the fault of the ostriches who insisted on having enough of something - preferably sand - each month with which to cover their heads.

To hear the elephants trumpet it, it was the fault of literally every other being on Earth that the lives of elephants weren't as perfect as they had been told by other elephants that a good elephant's life should be.

So the elephants attempted to limit and forbid other beings access to tree leaves, to air space, to waterholes, to sand and they tried to make the elephant trumpets the only sound in the entire world.

But tree leaves, waterholes, sand and sound are bigger than the elephant wishes and air doesn't have borders no matter how loudly the elephants trumpet otherwise.

Most true of all true things was the fact that the laws of the savannah applied to elephants too no matter how the elephants might stampede about it.

And that's just life in the savannah as any community educated giraffe, bird, worm, hippo or ostrich could tell you.

So life went on reasonably well, though not perfectly, and everyone worked together alongside the panoramicly sighted giraffes to make life as good as it could be for everyone - including the elephants even though the elephants would never see it or accept it.

And that's just life.

Thank you, to all of you, for your ongoing patronage and support of my created-by-hand-using-human-intelligence work! I appreciate every one of you! If you're a newly paid subscriber please feel free to download any or all of the 17 ebooks that I've written and illustrated which you can download and access anytime you wish from this index page.
Thank you again for being here!! 💚💚

P.S. in solidarity with my fellow art-from-human-hearts artists at

Introvert Drawing Club

who also create things by hand I did this badge 👇.¹

1. The little badge that could