Once upon a time there was a beautiful jungle and it had lots of different nice animals living in it. The animals were happy and they didn't fight with each other.
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One day the animals heard that a mean, mighty lion moved into the jungle. The lion wanted to be king of the jungle. The animals were angry when they heard this. When the mean, scary lion came into the jungle he was roaring very, very loud. |
| The animals could not go out and play in the beautiful jungle because if they did, the lion would eat them. The lion did not care who he ate when he was hungry. He just ate anybody that he saw. The jungle was not a beautiful place anymore. | 
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The animals didn't have any freedom, and so they decided to do something about it. They had a meeting and decided to write everyone's name and put it in a bag. At lunchtime, Mr. Rabbit, who was the wisest animal, would pull a name out of the bag and that animal would go to the lion's throne and become his lunch! When they told the lion their plan (on a day he wasn't so hungry), he accepted it. |
| One day, Mr. Rabbit pulled his own name of the bag! Mr. Rabbit started to shake at first but then suddenly he had an idea. He said goodbye to his friends and went to the king's throne. | 
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| When he got close to the lion's throne, he started running fast. He finally got there. The mean lion was waiting for him. "Why are you running and panting so hard." the lion asked him. | 
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Your majesty, said the rabbit, I was on my way here, when I saw another big mighty lion. He said that he was the strongest in this jungle and wanted to eat me, so I started running away from him and me to tell you the news." |
The lion became very angry when he heard that there was another strong lion living in that jungle. "Show me where you saw that lion and I'm going to challenge him," said the mad lion.
| "Follow me," said Mr. Rabbit. Mr. Rabbit led the lion down a path. At the end of this path was a well. He jumped up on the wall of the well and pointed down. There he is. said the rabbit, "That's where the other lion lives!" | 
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The big, mean lion looked down,
and sure enough he saw another
lion at the bottom of the well.
Since he wasn't very smart, he
didn't know that it was his own
reflection in the water..
"Hey! Who are you?" he shouted. "Hey! Who are you?" the voice from the bottom of the well repeated. This time the lion was sure that there was another lion down there who dared to answer him. "Don't, you ask me who I am!" shouted the lion. "Don't,you ask me who I am!" shouted back the voice from the well. |
| Now the lion was ready for a big challenge. He took a couple of steps back and ran toward the well and jumped in there. When he found out that it was only water at the bottom of the well, it was too late to climb up, because the well was too deep. | 
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| Mr. Rabbit hurried back to the animals and told them what happened. They all began to sing and play and celebrate the rabbit's clever mind. And once again they started to live in peace and harmony. |
Added to the WWW on 06/27/99
Updated on 08/18/99
Stories prepared for the web by:
WebMaster@MIDTESOL.org