Deep inside a green, noisy, wonderful jungle — where the trees were tall enough to touch the clouds and the rivers sang as they ran over the stones — there lived a small grey mouse named Micky. Micky was not a particularly big mouse. He was not particularly fast. But he had a warm little home, a mother who made the best acorn soup you ever tasted, and a father named Nandu who had a moustache that wiggled when he laughed. Best of all, Micky had three magnificent friends. There was Baloo, the bear cub, who was round and soft and smelled of honey. There was Bunny, the rabbit, whose ears were so long they sometimes got tangled in the branches. And there was Monty, the monkey, who could swing from tree to tree so fast that he looked like a furry little flash of lightning. Every single morning, the four of them would meet near the old banyan tree to play. They ran races, they built little dams in the stream, they played hide-and-seek among the ferns. Life was, in short, perfect. Or so it seemed from the outside.
But Micky had a worry that lived quietly inside his chest, like a pebble in a shoe. It did not hurt all the time. But it was always there. One evening, when the golden light of the sun was sliding slowly behind the hills, Micky came home dragging his little feet. His father Nandu was sitting on the doorstep, polishing his spectacles, and he noticed immediately that something was wrong. Fathers always do. Nandu: "What is it, my boy? You look like the sky before a storm." Micky sat down beside his father and was quiet for a moment. Then the words tumbled out, all at once. Micky: "Dad... we mice are so weak. Baloo can break a log just by sitting on it. Bunny can jump three times higher than me. And Monty! Monty can hang by his tail from the top of any tree! What can I do? I am small and I have little teeth and I cannot lift anything or climb anything or jump anywhere. I am useless, Dad." There was a pause. Nandu put down his spectacles and looked at his son very carefully.
Nandu: "My dear Micky, the jungle is full of creatures. Some are big, some are small. Some are fast, some are slow. But every single one of them — every ant, every elephant, every firefly — has something they can do that no one else can. The trick is not to look at what others have. The trick is to find what YOU have." Micky nodded slowly. He was not fully convinced — that pebble in his shoe was still there — but he hugged his father and went inside for dinner.
A few days passed, and Micky tried his best to stop comparing himself to the others. He tried, really he did. Then came the afternoon of the Bouncy Red Ball. Monty had brought it from somewhere — a perfectly round, perfectly red rubber ball that bounced wonderfully on the mossy ground. They were having the most brilliant game, tossing it back and forth, when Bunny accidentally kicked it too hard and it went soaring up, up, up... ...and landed, with a soft thump, right in the middle of the most tangled, thickest branches of the oldest mango tree in the clearing.
Everyone looked up. The ball was very high. Way too high for Bunny to jump, way too far for Baloo to reach, and Micky — Micky looked at the trunk and knew immediately that his tiny claws would never carry him that high. Before anyone could say a word, Monty grabbed the trunk, swung his legs up, and was climbing like the tree was a staircase. In less than a minute, he had the ball and was dropping back down, landing with a cheerful flip. Everyone cheered! Everyone, that is, except Micky, who clapped his tiny paws and smiled — but inside, that pebble in his shoe had started to ache again. He had stood there watching. He hadn't helped. Not even a little bit. That evening, at the dinner table, Micky barely touched his acorn soup. His mother noticed. Mothers always notice faster than fathers. Micky's Mom: "My little one, I know that look. What are you thinking about?" And Micky told her about the ball and the tree. About how everyone had something powerful and he had nothing. His mother smiled the kind of smile that was warm and soft, like sunlight through a curtain. Micky's Mom: "Micky, strength is not always about muscles. Sometimes it's about being exactly who you are, at exactly the right moment. Your moment will come. And when it does, you will know." That night, Micky lay in his small bed and stared at the ceiling and hoped, very quietly, that his mother was right.
A week later, the animal children had found a wonderful new clearing to play in — a wide, sunny patch just beyond the second row of teak trees, where the grass was short and soft and perfect for running. None of them knew about the hunter. The hunter had been watching the clearing for days. He had spread his large brown net over the grass, hidden cleverly under a thin layer of leaves, and tied it to stakes so that anything that ran over it would be caught — pulled in and tangled before it knew what had happened. The animal children came running in, laughing and shouting — and then, all at once — WHOOOMP.
