How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin

On a hot little island in the middle of the Red Sea, there once lived a Baker. He had a hat that shone in the sun, a jack-knife, and a cooking stove, the special kind you must never, ever touch.

One morning the Baker took flour and water and currants and plums and sugar and everything else nice, and he made himself the most wonderful cake. It was two feet across and three feet thick, and when it came out of the oven the smell was so heavenly the Baker did a small delighted dance.

But just as he was about to take his first bite, CLOMP CLOMP, down came a Rhinoceros with a horn on his nose and no manners at all.

In those days a Rhinoceros had a skin as smooth as glass. It buttoned underneath with three buttons, like a raincoat, and there was not a single wrinkle in it.

'How!' grunted the Rhinoceros, and without waiting to ask, he scooped the whole cake up on the tip of his horn and gulped it down. Then he waddled off into the interior, waving his tail.

The Baker climbed down from the palm tree he had scrambled up and looked sadly at the empty stove.

But five weeks later, there was a heat wave. Such a heat wave that everyone had to take their clothes off just to breathe. The Baker took off his hat. And down at the beach, waddle, waddle, waddle, came the Rhinoceros, who took off his whole skin. He undid the three buttons, folded the skin over his shoulder, laid it neatly on the sand, and marched into the sea for a bathe.

Now the Baker had been waiting for a moment exactly like this.

He crept down from his palm tree. He filled his hat with cake crumbs, old, dry, stale, tickly crumbs, with some burned currants for good measure. Then he took the Rhinoceros's skin, and he shook it, and he scrubbed it, and he rubbed it, until it was stuffed with as many crumbs as any skin could possibly hold.

Then he climbed back up his palm tree, and waited.

Out came the Rhinoceros, dripping. On went his skin. Up went the three buttons.

And then it began.

'Oh! OH!' he cried. 'What is that? WHAT IS THAT ITCH?'

He rubbed against a rock. He rolled in the sand. He rubbed against his palm tree. He rubbed so hard his three buttons popped clean off. He rubbed so long his lovely smooth skin bunched into folds, great deep folds over his shoulders, folds around his legs, folds where the buttons used to be. But the crumbs were inside his skin, and they only tickled worse.

And that is how, from that day to this, every rhinoceros has been born with great deep folds in his skin and a very bad temper indeed. All because he was rude about a cake.