ry big and has fine tusks, people sometimes try for ten
years to catch him, so that he may be used as the leading elephant of
a grand palace.

_Almost all the elephants you see in the zoo or in a circus were once
quite wild in the jungle_, and have been caught by some kind of trap.
They are then tamed, and finally trained to do tricks that men want
them to do. I shall tell you all about that in another book, when you
are a little older.

But now about Salar and his father. On the third day the big elephant
came there again, with Salar; and again the hunters came and hid in
the trees around. This time the big elephant looked farther into the
jungle. Then he saw the long bamboos growing in a clump--the very
clump from which the hunters had got the bamboos to make the trap. As
the elephant looked at the clump of bamboos, a thought came slowly
into his head.

He pulled out a long bamboo, and returned to the place where the trap
was. He stood just outside the trap, and thought again for some time.
Then he held one end of the bamboo in his trunk, pointed the other end
to the banana tree just where the stalk of the bunch began, and gave a
jab.

But he did not aim right, and the bamboo slipped off from the stalk.
So he tried again, and gave another jab at the stalk. In this way,
after trying many times, he managed at last to hit the stalk and break
it. Down fell the bunch of bananas to the ground.

Meanwhile Salar was jumping around his father for joy. But his father
told him to keep still. He had not succeeded in getting those bananas
yet! How could he get them out of the place of danger?

It puzzled him a long time. He poked at the bunch with the bamboo, but
that only broke off one or two of the bananas. Then he poked at the
stalk of the bunch, but the end of the bamboo slipped off it, as there
was nothing on the bamboo to grip the stalk with.

So he drew back the bamboo and looked at that end of it, to see why it
did not grip the stalk. Of course the end of the bamboo was all
smooth, and could not grip anything at all.

_Elephant Tricks the Tricky Trappers_

Then at last another thought seemed to come into the wise old
elephant's head. He put that end of the bamboo into his mouth and
began to _chew_ it; for an elephant has very strong teeth at the back
of his mouth. As his mouth was very big, that clever elephant chewed
as much of the end of the bamboo as his mouth would hold--and that was
as long as your arm.