Everyone has the stories they grew up with; ghost stories to get little kids to behave, stories with a moral message, stories to convey history. We all know these tales. There are some specific to when I was growing up that helped me understand many of the animals I am so in love with out here in the bush we call home.

One in particular sticks with me and this is the tale of how the elephant got its trunk, this tale is particular to the Venda and Shangaan people.

Believe it or not, elephants never always looked the way they do now. Once upon a time many, many moons ago, he was devoid of his trunk and instead, had a pig like snout with which he struggled daily.

This snout made it incredibly difficult for him to feed, drink and even clean himself. He had to feed incessantly to state his massive body’s hunger. When he wanted to drink, he had to kneel down and this would give him a headache which would plague him for a long time afterwards.

One day Elephant had to travel to a watering hole he had never visited before, all the others had all dried up and he had heard stories of the sweet water to be found at this particular place. What he did not know was that Crocodile had spread the stories of the sweet water via the birds of the land in an effort to entice a tasty meal to his far flung abode.

As Elephant approached the watering hole, Crocodile slid into the water without so much as a ripple and made his way across the expanse to where he knew Elephant would have to come and kneel. When Elephant came down to drink Crocodile, with terrifying speed, flew from the water and clamped his jaws down on poor Elephant’s trunk.

Now Elephant in his great pain and surprise began to pull back against the reptilian behemoth all the while with Crocodile trying to pull Elephant into the water. This tug of war drew on and on and all the while Elephants snout became more and more stretched. Eventually just as it was about to become dark Crocodile suddenly gave up and retreated into the water.

Elephant was left hideously disfigured and when he looked into the water he saw his reflection and he wept. In the morning he treated his wounds and tried to comprehend this long embarrassingly useless trunk. It wobbled as he turned his head and got in the way when he tried to drink. But slowly and surely he began to learn to control it, until eventually one day he could pluck the sweetest fruit from on up high and even suck up water in a standing position and spray it in his mouth.

All the other elephants saw this and one by one made their way to the Crocodile’s waterhole to endure the merciless stretching until all of them now had long wobbly trunks. They too learnt to control them.

To this day the Shangaan people still point out that when a young elephant is born it cannot control its long floppy trunk and it still has to kneel down to drink and does not use it to suckle from its mother.