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The Lion and the Mouse

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By Staff Middle Land

July 18, 2024
6:34 pm
Los Angeles, CA

By Adapted From Aesop ONCE a great big Lion lay fast asleep in the woods. By-and-by a Mouse came along, a little teeny, tiny Mouse. Now the Lion was lying so still, the Mouse thought he was only a big heap of dried brown grass. So the Mouse began scampering around up and down on the Lion’s body. Pretty soon—“Gr!” growled the Lion. The little feet of the Mouse were tickling the Lion’s stomach. Tickle, tickle, tickle, went the Mouse. The Lion squirmed and he grunted. He opened one big, round eye and then he opened the other. He saw the teeny, tiny Mouse and he woke up wide awake! He reached out a paw and snap! He snatched the little Mouse. “So, it’s you!” he roared. “It’s you

By Adapted From Aesop

ONCE a great big Lion lay fast asleep in the woods. By-and-by a Mouse came along, a little teeny, tiny Mouse. Now the Lion was lying so still, the Mouse thought he was only a big heap of dried brown grass. So the Mouse began scampering around up and down on the Lion’s body.

Pretty soon—“Gr!” growled the Lion. The little feet of the Mouse were tickling the Lion’s stomach. Tickle, tickle, tickle, went the Mouse. The Lion squirmed and he grunted. He opened one big, round eye and then he opened the other. He saw the teeny, tiny Mouse and he woke up wide awake! He reached out a paw and snap! He snatched the little Mouse.

“So, it’s you!” he roared. “It’s you who’ve awakened me! I’ll just put a stop to that! I’ll eat you for my breakfast!” Well, the Mouse was terribly frightened. His heart went pit-a-pat, but he squeaked in a little bit of voice: “O mighty King of the Beasts, please don’t eat me up! I’ll never forget your kindness if you’ll let me go this once!”

But the Lion opened his jaws. He opened his great big mouth and began to smack his lips. “Yum, yum, little Mouse,” he said. “I think you will taste very good!”

Trembling all over, the Mouse began to coax harder and harder: “Please let me go! O please! Who knows, great King of the Beasts, if you would let me go, it might even happen some day that I could be helpful to you!”

“You help me!” cried the Lion. “A teeny, tiny thing like you help the great big King of the Beasts. Hah hah!
Haw haw! Ho ho!” He laughed so loud and so long that all the forest rang. But he laughed so loud and so long that he made himself feel very jolly. “Well, after all,” he said, “you’re really far too small to be even one bite for me. I’ll catch something better for breakfast!” And he opened his great, big paw so the little Mouse slipped out and scampered as fast as he could to hide himself in the grass.

Well, not long after this, the Lion was wandering in the woods when he suddenly fell in a hole that had been dug by some hunters who wanted to catch the Lion. These hunters meant to put the Lion in a cage and carry him to their King. They meant to set the cage for a show in the palace yard so the people might ‘come and see this beautiful, great, big beast.

The Lion was groaning in the hole when the band of hunters found him. They drew him up out of the trap and tied him with a rope to a tree. Then they went off and left him in order to get a wagon to carry him to the palace.

“I must get away,” thought the Lion, ‘before the hunters come back!” And he tugged and tore at the rope but he could not get himself free. And so at last he cried sadly: “They have me! I cannot get loose! I shall end my life in a cage. Nevermore shall I see this great, big, beautiful forest!”

But as he was crying and sighing, it chanced that the Mouse came by, the teeny, tiny little Mouse.

“Well, well, friend Lion,” he squeaked. “What’s this that has happened to you, the great big King of the Beasts?”

“The hunters have bound me fast,” the Lion groaned. “There isn’t a thing I can do to break this great, strong rope.”

“Is that all the trouble, friend?” the Mouse laughed cheerily.

“You needn’t seem so glad about it. It’s a very sad end for me!” the Lion began to grumble.

But already the little Mouse had gone straight up to the rope and begun with his sharp teeth to gnaw it. He gnawed and he gnawed and he gnawed. And pretty soon split, split, split, the rope began to break. Then he gnawed and he gnawed some more. Split, split, split, went the rope. Bit by bit, the Mouse chewed until all at once—snip, snap, he had gnawed through the very last strand. The rope broke straight in two and there stood the Lion free!

“You thought I could never help you,” the Little Mouse squeaked to the Lion, “but look, I have set you free!”

“Well, well!” The Lion was so surprised he could hardly speak. “Just look at what you’ve done! A teeny, tiny thing like you to set free the King of the Forest! I’m ashamed that I laughed at you. You’ve shown me that, no matter how very small one is, he can always be helpful to others, although they are larger than he. Goodbye, little friend! I thank you!” And the Lion ran with a bound off into the forest.

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