Lizard

The air rippled above the pile of stones. The lizard twitched her hip and took up an s-shaped pose like an ordinary photo model. After a moment she changed her left side to a convex curve. The movement was quick and graceful; the lizard’s tail swished through a broad arc so quickly you could hardly see it. Her thin, blistery skin pressed against the surface of the stone. The lizard felt the rough, raised patterns through the thin skin of her belly. She felt unpleasant, but otherwise the place was good, and the lizard did not have the energy to look for a better one. She looked through her eyelashes at the fissured sky and saw the golden disc shining at the centre of the dome. She was happy. Everything in her life was good, the weather was pleasantly dry, the temperature exactly suitable.

The lizard rummaged in her string bag and found a pair of sunglasses. Through the glasses the sand looked dark brown and the trees lush and damp. The lizard took out her sun-cream and began to rub her skin with it. She smoothed the cream lazily, with light, circular movements and thought as she smoothed that her light complexion was delicate. She was thin-skinned, more sensitive than many of her friends, and of the lizards hers was the clearest lizard’s skin. She blushed with pleasure as she thought about herself, her round-kneed legs, her pretty nails, her tail. She slit her eyes and saw in the sky a black dot drawing a great figure of eight on the blue surface. Satisfied, the lizard adjusted her position. Then she changed her right side to a convex curve and sank into the white light. She no longer thought of anything.

And then came the hawk! It flew like an arrow over the pile of stones, falling straight from the sky, a feathered missile. It was a beak and a claw. A hawk’s shriek. A fluttering of wings. Then it was gone.

And the lizard!

Only her sunglasses, her towel and her string bag were left on the stone. The other lizards’ weeping and lamentations were already to be heard from a crevice in the rock. Someone had seen the lizard’s tail rising into the heights. There she now flew, a lizard without wings. The lizards sang a dirge about a hawk’s claws, how beautiful it is to die by their blades, how lovely it is to fly, how sublime a fate to be the prey of a hawk.

Red flowed on the stone, fresh lizard blood.

The blood smelt sweet and beckoned carrion flies.

Soon a green cloud with a shining shell buzzed over the stone. The flies stopped at the pool of blood and patted she with their flat fly snouts, sucking.

At that very moment the lizard crawled out from the hole in the stone and retrieved her string bag and towel. Blood flowed from her behind. Shreds of skin hung round red flesh. That looked awful, but she smiled broadly in the direction of the other lizards. Her whole tail had been ripped off.

‘It’s working again!’ the lizard said, showing her bloody behind.

‘It really is!’ shouted the lizards. They had stopped singing.

The lizard rummaged in her bag for a mirror and used it to examine her backside. The shreds of skin would soon heal. The bloody backside was the most sensitive of all; there was no skin there at all. Now she was no longer merely the most thin-skinned of the lizards, she was actually skinless, raw. Although the site of her tail was tender and hurt, the lizard was delighted. This was exactly what she had been aiming for, a perfect performance, swift and exact. She knew she was skilful.

The other lizards crowded round offering their congratulations. In her speed, her surprising strength and the grace of her movements this lizard was insuperable.

At the point where the tail had broken off the bloody surface quivered as the lizard moved. Only a few little red drops were still falling on to the stone, and the flies hurried to devour them like a musical, glittering cloud.

‘A perfect day,’ the lizard said.

‘A perfect performance,’ the other lizards said.

‘It’ll be another couple of days,’ the lizard said.

‘A week,’ the lizards said.

‘Then I shall do it again,’ the lizard said.

And the lizard lay down with her belly against the surface of the stone, spread her legs in all directions and listened to the quiet aching of the site of her tail. She was enjoying herself. The lizard turned her left side to a convex curve and recalled that among the elements of the performance’s climax had been the sickening, wild smell of the hawk’s belly-feathers. The smell of carrion and death. And blood.

And perhaps the sweet smell of a new tail.

 *

Sometimes fear and loss have

           a strange, stimulating enchantment.

Cheetah

The cheetah looked in the mirror. He had oiled his body carefully, the muscles of his limbs moved beneath his spotted skin and his strong shoulder blades protruded from his back like wings. His hips were narrow. The cheetah pulled on a sprinter’s tight shorts, spun round in front of the mirror again and tried to see himself from behind: how his tight buttocks quivered, how he could control every tiny muscle of his thighs.

The cheetah had shaped his body dedicatedly and, muscle by muscle, built up his body. He had concentrated particularly on developing strength and speed. Now he knew he was the fastest on the savannah.

‘I am the fastest,’ said the cheetah to his reflection.

‘I am the fastest,; said the cheetah’s reflection.

The big cat’s tail curled in the air. The dense spots of his coat coalesced, in his tail, into thick rings, which the cheetah particularly liked.

‘I have the longest tail,’ said the cheetah to his reflection.

‘I have the longest tail,’ said his reflection.

And because the cheetah was the fastest and most handsome, he had begun to hunt by day as well as by night. Thus everyone who wished to could see the cheetah’s astonishing hips and his firm muscles. For that reason the cheetah liked most of all the gently sloping and undulating savannah and its short grass. There he found himelf a termite mound, a stump or a fallen tree on which he sat down. Everyone could see the cheetah and the cheetah could see every pretty gazelle that passed by, if he wanted to look.

Gazelles are the best meat,’ said the cheetah to his reflection.

‘Gazelles are the best meat,’ said his reflection.

The cheetah was not interested in antelopes, guinea fowl, gnus or zebras, although he sometimes hunted even them, if nothing better was on offer. He was interested in gazelles. Their lyre-shaped horns aroused a musical feeling in the cheetah; as if the whole herd were playing the same composition. The gazelles’ white bellies stimulated the cheetah’s mind and the dark stripe on their sides made the big cat tremble. The mere thought of a gazelle made the saliva froth beneath his tongue.

‘The best and the fastest,’ said the cheetah to his reflection.

‘The best and the fastest,’ said his reflection.

For an easy prey was not enough for the cheetah. He chose the fastest, and the fastest was the gazelle. The gazelle was a cautious animal, but fearless nonetheless. He was as if made for running and he sped across the plains as light as wind across a meadow. The herd of gazelle ran boisterously to and fro trying to put a suitable distance between he and the predator that surveyed it from on high. Every gazelle believed that the herd’s light dancing improved the savannah’s atmosphere. And he was indeed true: the pop of horns and ankles also refreshed the cheetah’s mind. He loved the gazelles’ beauty. The creature was, in the cheetah’s opinion, just the right size, and it could be approached without being noticed.

‘I shall take the one I choose,’ said the cheetah, stretching languidly.

‘I shall take the one I choose,’ said the cheetah’s reflection.

When he was hunting, the cheetah crept. He hid in the grass and approached his prey carefully. His heart beat frenziedly as he crept through the short grass. His muscles tautened, his eyes stared steadily at his lightly dancing prey. With his paw he carefully pushed aside the grass, his tail curled and shook with excitement. And then, one-two! The cheetah leaped into the air, with a couple of bounds his speed increased giddily, the herd fled, but the prey ran awkwardly, and the cheetah was constantly gaining on it. The gazelle was fast, but the cheetah was faster. He was a practiced and extremely effective hunter.

The cheetah was a sprinter. He never ran long distances.

‘I love beauty,’ said the cheetah to his reflection.

‘I love beauty,’ said the cheetah’s reflection.

The cheetah looked in the mirror once again. For a moment it seemed as if he was his reflection’s reflection.

 *

Sometimes it’s worth running.

Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Extracts from the children’s book Zoo – eläimellinen tarina (‘Zoo – a bestial story’, WSOY, 2009, illustrated by Pertti Jarla)

The place: A zoo, once the property of the city, now privatised and accountable to corporate stockholders

The characters: The animals of the zoo, in particular Gandhi, a Sumatran tiger (false-teeth, poor vision, pacifist), Che, a male mandrill baboon (militant), and Mother Teresa, a hammer-headed bat (elderly); the zookeeper Sihvonen (stands up for the animals, recently fired); the new zoo director (whose main goal is to maximise profits); the shareholders’ committee (awaiting their earnings)

The action: after a demonstration in which all the animals played dead, the animals are staging a revolution to demand that Sihvonen be reinstated

The animals crowded into the foyer. The hallway was full of every kind of creature, with all of their skin, fur and feathers steaming in the warm indoor air. Che stood at the top of the the stairs, looked down at his troops, and gave the order in mime for everybody to be quiet.

‘Reconnaissance?’ he said, his voice subdued.

‘Ready!’ the leaf-tailed geckos announced.

‘Head in!’ Che commanded.

Silent as shadows, the lizards slipped under the door into the assembly hall, scattered, and climbed over the walls and ceiling, to get an impression of the overall tactical situation. A moment later they returned to the foyer and the group leader gave his report:

‘There are twenty of them – unarmed, by the looks of it.’

‘Roger!’ said Che. ‘Are the air divisions ready?’

The horned owl saluted with one wing.

‘Ready, comandante!’

‘Panzer division?’

‘Ready!’ the elephant said, and waved his lopsided ears to confirm (his mother was an African, his father an Indian elephant). The square-lipped rhinoceros, the African buffalo, both polar bears, and all the other animals weighing at least half a ton, stood beside him. Out of camaraderie, they had let the pygmy hippopotamus into the panzer division, too, although technically he was considerably underweight.

‘Good,’ Che said. ‘We’ll attack in pincer formation. You all know what you have to do. Hasta la victoria siempre – to battle, comrades!’

‘For the glory of God,’ Mother Teresa whispered.

‘And without bloodshed!’ Gandhi reminded them.

The owl and the other birds flew out and surrounded the building. The air forces had orders to assault the hall through the window, and Teresa was responsible for a special mission: to fly at the front of the formation and break the window with her hammer head.

Inside, the elephant listened intently, his larger ear pressed tightly against the door of the assembly hall. He listened and waited. And waited. And listened. The harvest mouse was so excited he got the hiccups. Che and the other animals looked at him disapprovingly, and the mouse had such a fright that his hiccups stopped. After several agonising seconds, the elephant finally heard the sound of breaking glass from inside the hall, and gave Che the signal.

‘Charge!’ Che commanded.

The elephant blew a fanfare and walked right through the closed door as if it were made of cardboard.

The entire infantry followed in a wave behind him – first the large animals, then the middle-sized ones, and finally the little ones. Meanwhile, birds of every size and colour flooded in the window, and both the air and ground divisions brayed, cackled, neighed, snarled, roared, bellowed, hissed, barked, howled, croaked, and grunted as loud as they could. The only thing missing was gunshots.

Chaos ensued. The director of the zoo and the shareholders were frozen in shock, unable to move, and stared in disbelief as the animals that had been lying dead as doornails in their cages just a moment before took over the hall.

Before any human had managed to make a move, Che yelled, ‘Dark forces – now!’

The alpaca, who had remained standing near the door according to plan, turned out the lights. It was completely dark. The humans and animals were suddenly blind and no one could take a step, let alone fight. No one, that is, except for the night animals, and the animals who didn’t need eyes.

Every able-bodied bug from the insect house swarmed over the shareholders in the dark and burrowed inside their clothes – six-legged, eight-legged, twelve and even thousand-legged creatures from every continent swarmed into their clothing, and night moths from every jungle buzzed around their ears.

The humans flailed around, yelled and screamed, hoping that they would wake up from this nightmare, and they were so overcome with horror that they didn’t notice the nimble little hands untying the silken knots around their necks and stealing their neckties away into the darkness.

‘Let there be light!’ Che commanded.

The lights came on again. Che stood at the conference table like a commander on the heights. Once his eyes had adjusted to the light, he reviewed the situation:

The entire operation had lasted only a few moments, and was in all respects a complete victory. The surprise attack had played out in an exemplary fashion, and not a drop of blood had been shed – no one had even stepped on a bug in the dark. The take-over couldn’t have been more successful. Just one thing left to do…

‘Where’s Sihvonen?’ Gandhi asked.

The director was still lying on the floor but had recuperated enough to be able to speak again.

‘I will not negotiate with terrorists! What do you want?’

‘Give us Sihvonen!’ Gandhi demanded.

‘Zookeeper Sihvonen has no further business here,’ the director said. ‘His contract was terminated!’

‘Terminated?’ Che said, then repeated slowly. “Ter-mi-na-ted?’

It was so quiet in the hall that you could have heard a sparrow’s feather drop. The shareholders still didn’t comprehend what exactly was happening. They struggled in vain to free their hands from their silk restraints.

It took a moment before the animals understood the full desperateness of the situation: They had just won a major battle without any casualties, they had taken the director and shareholders prisoner, but they were too late. It had all been a waste of time. Sihvonen had been terminated. Sweet victory had turned into bitter defeat, they had lost their only friend.

Everyone looked at Che, who was feverishly contemplating his next step.

‘What do we do now?’ Gandhi asked, lifting his eyebrows.

Che’s colour had completely drained away, both in front and behind, and he looked at the shareholders with a strange gleam in his eye.

‘You’ll pay for this!’ he said, his voice devoid of expression. He didn’t turn his lips inside out, or yell, or beat his chest. Revenge is a dish best served cold. The other monkeys had never seen him in this state of mind. They withdrew a couple of steps in fear.

The shareholders began to perceive that the moment had arrived when the enraged flock of animals would tear them to pieces. Che was about to let hell loose – but the order died in his throat. The director had escaped from his necktie bonds and stood up behind Che. Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed the mandrill by the throat and started to choke him.

‘Surrender!’ the director yelled. ‘Surrender, you… animals!’

Che hadn’t had much time before the battle to rehearse the smaller details of the attack, and the young four-fingered mongoose hadn’t understood that human’s hands should always be tied behind their backs. Che coughed and bent over, trying to free himself from the director’s grip, but he didn’t have the strength to do it. All he could manage to do was to plead with Gandhi to help him.

The tiger’s blood in old Gandhi’s veins started to boil. Some ancient remembered feeling came into his mind. He saw in flashes a tropical jungle, bygone days of hunting and brawling. And Gandhi followed his large cat instincts, opened his mouth wide, like a predator, let out a real roar, leapt across the hall, oblivious of his creaky hips, and clamped his jaws on the director – more precisely, on his rear end.

But just as he was shutting his mouth, a voice inside him told him to stop, and he left the bite off halfway. He held onto the director’s posterior but did no more than that. Che couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His eyes rolled and bulged out of his head.

‘Bite him!’ he gasped. ‘Bite him good!’

Gandhi’s stomach growled so loudly that everyone in the hall could hear it. The director’s flesh was so tempting in his mouth. It really did make him want to take a proper bite out of him. No, no, no. Gandhi remembered that violence makes animals human. He mustn’t give way to primitive aggression.

‘I can’t,’ he snarled. ‘I can’t do it.’

‘Bite him! For the sake of peace, if nothing else! Bite him!” Che’s voice was just a whisper now.

‘There is no road to peace, peace is the road,’ Gandhi said. He sighed and began to loosen his hold.

‘This circus is over!’ the director said, shaking the animals’ limp commander like a rag doll. ‘Get back in your cages immediately, or this monkey will die.’

The animals looked helplessly at each other, at Gandhi, at Che. What should they do? The most timid of them began to panic. A murmur went through the hall.

‘Perhaps in light of the current circumstances,’ said the owl. ‘we would do best to begin deliberations… That is to say, since Sihvonen is at this point is already terminated…’

‘Life is a struggle. Join the fight!’ said a delicate but decisive voice from above. Mother Teresa was fluttering defiantly, stretching her hammer head toward the director’s speaker’s stand. She had just woken up and hadn’t seen any of the battle. She thought the campaign had just begun.

Smack!

Mother Teresa collided with the chandelier that hung from the ceiling and fell toward the floor like a stone. The chandelier started to sway on its chain, and all eyes in the assembly hall followed it. Che, the director, and Gandhi, looked especially worried, because they were underneath it. After a tiny eternity, the chain broke, and the lamp plummeted downward.

It landed right on Gandhi’s large skull, which the tiger was still using to ponder the meaning of war and peace. Gandhi went out like a light, unaware that his jaw had closed under the weight of the chandelier and his dentures had sunk deep into the directors’ rear end like a hot knife through butter. He also didn’t notice that some sort of warm, sweet liquid had spurted into his mouth and hit his tastebuds.

The director let out a non-animal yell and let go of Che’s throat.

‘Thank God!’ Che said without thinking, immediately swallowing the words. It was a good thing Teresa was asleep again, and hadn’t heard him. The director screamed and tried to escape from Gandhi’s false teeth, which were still embedded in his caboose.

Luckily Gandhi’s head wasn’t just large and square, but also hard as a rock. Barely a few moments had passed before his large eyes opened again. They were still a bit crossed, though.

‘No violenth!’ he said. ‘No violenth unda any soocumstanthes!’ He was still a little dazed. His glasses had fallen on the floor. The elephant found them and set them back on his face.

‘Thankth,’ Gandhi said, but the world didn’t come into focus. The glasses were broken, there were just a few shards of thick glass left in the wire frames.

‘Whath in my mouf?” Gandhi mused. ‘It tathtes deliciouth.”

‘Merry Christmas everyone!’ a low voice suddenly said. Sihvonen had stepped through the broken-down doorway into the assembly hall. ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

‘Sihvonen!’ the director shouted. ‘It’s about time! Put these animals back in their cages immediately!’

‘Well, I don’t work here anymore, sir,’ Sihvonen said.

‘I was just kidding about that. Glad to have you back. Merry Christmas! I’ll give you a raise! Just get these animals out of here!’

The director took his hands from where they were holding onto his torn up backside and shredded pants and held them out in a gesture of reconciliation.

The colours had returned to Che’s face. He climbed back up on the table rubbing his throat, but before he could manage to announce the animals’ smashing victory, something strange happened to the elephant: Suddenly the large, grey animal fell on his side as if suffering from severe spasms. His lopsided ears flapped like rhubarb leaves in an autumn wind, his stomach churned and seethed, and his trunk lashed the floor like a fire hose that someone’s lost hold of. It looked like he was poisoned, or having an apoplectic stroke, or an epileptic fit. Or all three.

Sihvonen, the animals, the shareholders, and the director were aghast at the way he was thrashing about. Maybe he had swallowed something he shouldn’t have and choked on it, but no one was big enough to do the Heimlich manoeuvre on him to get the foreign object out of his windpipe. It was a long time before they realised that the spasms weren’t life-threatening – it was just a good, old-fashioned fit of laughter.

‘What’s so funny?’ Che asked with annoyance. ‘We’re kind of in the middle of something here! Could you be a little more serious?’

The elephant tried to calm down, but he couldn’t stop the laughter, which was bringing tears to his eyes. When he had finally collected himself a little, he trumpeted: ‘Look! Look!’ and started to laugh again, so hard that his animal friends were beginning to worry about him.

‘Look at what?’ Sihvonen asked.

The elephant pointed with his trunk at the director, whose pants were hanging in tatters around his ankles.

‘People laugh at my ears… ‘ the elephant yelled, his trunk in a twist.

‘So?’ said Gandhi.

‘… but look at what he uses to breathe with!’

Everyone looked. And when they realised what the elephant was talking about, they all burst out laughing – the animals, the shareholders, and Sihvonen, all at once and all together. And the laughter that burst out of them wasn’t any ordinary laughter, it was earthshaking laughter. The kind of laughter where your stomach starts to hurt but you still can’t stop laughing. They laughed and laughed and laughed until, after a long time, they were finally able to stop and catch their breath.

But because the elephant started to giggle again, quietly, the laughter got into everybody’s tummies again, and there was another attack of mirth. Everyone laughed until they hurt so much that they had to hold onto each other, both the people and the animals.

Everyone was laughing except for the director and Gandhi, who couldn’t see anything, and Mother Teresa, who had got quite a knock to the head.

The television and newspaper stories went around the world. ‘The Christmas Miracle at the Zoological Gardens’ was on everyone’s lips – the story of a zoo where all of the animals died mysteriously, and rose from the dead on the same day. The zoo was a tourist mecca now. Clubs and school field trips came by the busload, families with children formed long lines.

‘How is your memoir coming along?’ Sihvonen asked Che, who was sitting on the big boulder on monkey island, diligently tapping away at an old black typewriter.

‘Very well, thank you. It’s almost finished. I was thinking I would title it ‘The Silk War’, or ‘The Necktie Rebellion’. Which do you think is better, director?’

‘Just call me Sihvonen, like always,’ Sihvonen said. ‘It’s hard to decide. I think they both sound good.’

‘What happened to the old director, anyway?’ Che asked. ‘Was he terminated?’

‘Not at all,’ Sihvonen said, smiling. ‘He’s at an institution now.’

‘Ah! So he was sent to jail?’ Che asked, putting another piece of paper in the typewriter.

‘No. He’s the director of a nursing home now.’

Gandhi was lying spread out in his favourite spot, and around him romped all the little animal cubs and chicks and whelps who had been born at the zoo that spring. Gandhi realised that he had no right to keep his august life story to himself – he had a responsibility to share it with the next generation. So these days he had an afternoon meeting once a week for the young folks at the zoo. He was just coming to his favourite part of the story:

‘… and then I lifted my wounded comrade on my shoulders, threw a hand grenade into the enemy trench, and charged, with just one cartridge left.’ He paused for a moment and cleaned his new designer glasses.

‘That’s what it was like at the Battle of Stalingrad,’ he said in conclusion. ‘Many a good animal never returned.’

‘Last week he said it was at Waterloo!’ Sihvonen thought as he sidled over to the barn in rubber boots that were slightly too large for him. The dormouse had a tummy ache. He should get him some pretzels and soda.

Mother Teresa. Illustration: Pertti Jarla

Translated by Lola Rogers

A story from the children’s book Sorsa norsun räätälinä (‘The mallard as tailor to the elephant’, Otava, 2008; illustrated by Christel Rönns)

Back in the days when mallard still had horns, earthworms, claws, and the bear had a long tail, a bear was trudging dejectedly along the road. Up drove a fox in his van, studded tires crunching, for it was winter and freezing cold. The fox was coming from fishing and his van was bursting with fresh fish. When he saw the bear, the fox stopped, rolled down the window and called, ‘Why hi there, old honey snout! Where’re you coming from?’ ‘I was playing cards at Badger’s. I lost all my money and now I’m starving,’ the bear replied. ‘Jump in. No need to suffer in the grip of this cold,’ the fox said.  The fox and the bear were good friends. However, the fox envied the bear, because Mr Honeypaws had a much longer, more handsome tail than the fox did. The bear clambered into the fox’s car and saw the enormous catch of fish. ‘Wherever did you get such an incredible amount of fish?’ the bear marvelled. ‘The lake. That’s where you get fish,’ the fox replied. ‘Last week I caught such a big pike that I made snow shovels out of its scales.’

‘I wish I knew how to fish,’ the bear sighed, his stomach growling with hunger. Right then the fox’s van blew a tire and the fan belt snapped.

‘If you get this thing fixed, I’ll teach you to fish,’ the fox promised.

The bear, who happened to be a car mechanic, fixed the problems in no time. ‘Come to our place at six tomorrow morning and we’ll go fishing together,’ the fox thanked him, and drove the bear right up to his door.

The next morning the bear clattered up the fox’s steps at five already. The fox peeked out the window of his bedroom, his eyes squinting.

‘You’ve got to be kidding. It’s just five in the morning and you’re waking me in the middle of my dreams,’ the fox yawned.

‘I thought I’d come early so as not to be late,’ the bear explained.

‘All right. Wait there. I’ll brush my teeth,’ the fox said, rubbing his bleary eyes. A moment later the fox strode into the yard. He had with him a shiny new ice fishing rod, an ice auger and a fishing stool.

‘How will I fish, since I have no rod and line?’ the bear asked with concern.

‘You don’t need a line. You have your own fishing gear on you,’ the fox answered.

‘That was a little over my head,’ the bear said, puzzled. ‘Where is it you think I have fishing gear?’

‘Peek behind you. There swings your fishing line,’ the fox enlightened him. The bear glanced at his long tail.

‘You want me to fish with my tail?’ the bear asked.

‘The tail’s the thing,’ the fox replied, smiling to himself.

They arrived at the lake. The air was bitter cold, and stars twinkled in the sky.

‘Looks like a great day for fishing,’ the fox remarked, stopping the van beside the dock.

‘How can you tell it’ll be a great day for fishing?’ the bear asked.

‘From the angle of your tail,’ grinned the fox.

‘But how will I fare without even any bait? You have the very latest and best gear,’ grumbled the bear.

‘You ask too many questions,’ growled the fox. ‘Real fishermen don’t ask, they act.’

The bear and the fox walked across the ice to the edge of the rushes. The fox took the auger and drilled a hole in the ice.

‘Stick your tail through the hole. The fish always bite here next to the rushes,’ the fox said.

The bear stuffed his tail through the hole and sat waiting for whatever would come next.

‘What should I do next?’ the bear inquired.

‘Nothing at all. Just sit and wait for fish to start coming,’ the fox replied from a short distance away where he was drilling a hole in the ice for himself.

The fox fed his fine ice fishing line into the hole, let out the line and began fishing.

‘We’ll see what Old Bruin has to say when his tail freezes tight to the ice hole,’ the fox snickered softly to himself.

‘Any bites?’ the fox called to the bear.

‘Not yet – but here comes one!’ the bear yelled. He pulled out his tail. From it dangled an enormous perch.

‘Got a perch!’ the bear announced. He detached the perch from his tail and put his tail back into the hole in the ice.

It wasn’t long before the bear jumped up again with a metre-long whopper clamped to his tail.

‘Got a pike, now!’ the bear chuckled. ‘Do you have many fish yet?’

‘Not a single one,’ the fox replied, and had barely got the words out before the bear was already whipping his tail out of the ice hole. This time a handsome pikeperch was fastened to it.

‘Got a pike-perch!’ the bear exulted.

The fox began to feel cross. He tossed away his fishing pole. He was fuming.

‘Don’t worry, dear brother. You have a tail, too. Try the same trick,’ the bear advised.

The fox threaded his tail into the hole in the ice and waited. The bear kept whisking forth fish, but the fox did not catch even a minnow.

‘I’m sitting here till I catch a fish!’ the fox snorted to himself.

A half hour passed. The bear had heaps of fish, the fox had not a one.

‘This is ridiculous. I’m going home to make some pea soup,’ the fox hissed.

He tried to pull his tail out of the ice hole, but it would not budge. His tail had frozen fast to the edge of the ice hole. The fox was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

‘Stop fishing and get over here on the double!’ the fox yelled to the bear.

The bear trudged over to the fox and saw that he was indeed in a predicament.

‘Now you are in a tight spot,’ the bear said, scratching his head.

‘I guess I know that much!’ the fox shrieked. ‘Don’t stand there gawking, do something! Call the fire brigade!’

The bear ran like lightning to the nearest house and called the fire brigade. It was not long before firemen raced to the beach in their red engine.

‘What’s the matter?’ the fire chief asked.

‘The tail,’ the bear answered. ‘The fox’s tail. It’s frozen fast.’

The firemen sprayed the ice hole with hot water and the fox was freed from his predicament.

The bear scooped all his fish into his enormous arms and trundled after the fox to the van.

‘Thank you, Fox, for teaching me how to fish. My heartfelt thanks,’ the bear smiled.

The fox said not a word. He was sulking. But the bear was in such grand spirits that as he clambered onto the van seat, he closed the door on his tail, still swinging on the outside. The tail snapped in two.

‘There went a good fishing line,’ said the bear.

And ever since that day, bears have had short stubby tails, and foxes are no longer envious of bears. On that same day, wild ducks lost their horns, earthworms their claws, and in Hungary a chicken emerged from an ostrich egg sporting a baseball cap and a tie.

Translated by Jill G. Timbers
(First published in Books from Finland 4/2008.)