by Rachael Long
The Quite Unusual Tale of
The Spotless Leopard
By Rachael Long
Text copyright ©2012 Rachael Long
Revised 2014
All Rights Reserved
The Quite Unusual Tale of
The Spotless Leopard
Contents
Part One
Being the Beginning
In which a group of trees become a wood
and then a forest
and a leopard becomes…
spotless.
Part Two
Being the Middle
Involving in order of appearance:
a hyena, a lost explorer,
a passing polar bear
and a baboon...
Part Three
Being the part
before
The Ending
In which everyone lives happily ever after
until the next morning...
and then…
things continue
for a little while longer…
The Spotless Leopard
Once upon a long ago or twice upon a short ago and perhaps even thrice upon a time for the mice, there stood a group of trees on the African savannah. The trees all knew each other but never spoke because they were very spread out: one here, one there, another further over there…and oh yes, that one too, over there...far in the distance.
Instead of talking the trees passed messages written on leaves using unemployed vultures. This was fine for the trees but the leaves were not entirely happy, especially when the vultures turned vegetarian and started eating them! The leaves would often rustle away to each other, mostly complaining that leaves never got a good deal in stories, as in most stories involving trees, the leaves often got left out – as indeed they have with this one now.
However, before the leaves were entirely written out of the story, the trees used them to send one more message to each other, using a sailor who was dangling from the neck of a passing albatross…
The trees had grown tired of being bumped against and chewed by the elephants. We must join together and form a forest, they decided. Slowly over many years and one or two anthills, the trees shuffled across the savannah until they came together as a small wood.
Many years later the small wood had grown into a forest. And a very popular forest it was too. Animals, birds and insects from far and wide came to live there. The forest even got itself a name. However, not everyone could pronounce it, particularly the monkeys who always ended up in howls of chittering-chattering laughter after the third syllable. Because of this the forest’s name became forgotten and soon everyone called the forest, The Lost Forest. Not because it was lost (all the animals and birds knew where it was) but because it had lost its name. The forest didn’t mind, having no name made it sound mysterious.
In the middle of the forest near a clearing a sleek looking leopard named Opa was practising jumping off tree branches. The tree monkeys kept encouraging her to climb ever higher; “Oh, you’re doing fine. You climb like a monkey.” They said. Spurred on, Opa climbed to the very top of a tree and…jumped…she would have leapt, but it was quite high up. On the way down she waved to the monkeys. “My, my,” they said to one another, “a flying leopard. Not since the time of the dinosaur has there been such a strange sight.” The monkeys raced down the tree from branch to branch to witness the unhappy landing that was sure to come.
For Opa the ground seemed to be getting closer awfully fast. She let out her loudest, bravest growl, gritted her teeth, smiled, stuck out all her feet, bent her knees, closed her eyes and…
THUD!
The ground shook.
The monkeys howled with delight. “Now, I’ll bet you a whole banana tree, you can’t get an elephant to do the same thing!” Said one monkey to the other.
Opa was stunned, giddy, cross-eyed and…passed out. When she awoke she discovered she had landed so hard her feet and legs had made holes in the ground. Not wishing to waste an opportunity, a family of Meerkats had moved into the holes. The daddy Meerkat jabbed Opa’s nose with a stick. “These holes are our home and you’re trespassing. Clear off!”
Opa picked herself up and grumbled, “Humpf, Meerkats, first they get their own TV ads then they think they own the forest!” She stretched and looked around. Something else was jabbing her but this time with a pencil. It was a stork. Tall, well groomed and with a small leopard-skin-pill-box hat.
Opa growled at the hat. “I bet you’d make good mattress stuffing, ” she said to the stork. The stork hopped back and removed the hat. “Fake fur,” it said.
Mmm...thought Opa, “What about the fake leopard it came from?”
The stork handed Opa a clipboard.
“What’s this?” Opa enquired. The stork replaced his hat, stood up straight, tapped his badge that read, Lost Forest Keeper (although under the words Lost Forest it was still possible to read the scribbled out word, Park) and said, “Opa Leopard, member of the cat family.” Opa nodded. The stork continued, “Please sign here and here.” The stork pointed to a form on his clipboard. Opa placed one paw print then another on the form. “Have I won something?” she asked. The stork took back the clipboard and shook his head. “No, I’m afraid you have just used up one of your nine lives leaping from that tree.” The stork handed Opa a receipt. It read:
Receipt
Jumping from a too tall tree
Cost:One life
Balance: Eight lives
“Good day to you,” said the Stork and with that he took a hop, skip and jump – which was quite naughty because they weren’t his to take – and was off up into the sky.
Opa looked at the receipt then up at the tree she had jumped from and tutted. Pesky monkeys she thought…then she noticed piles of small black splodges on the ground. She stared up at the sky, “how strange, black splodges falling from the sky. Must be those monkeys playing tricks again”. However, later that day, when she went to the watering hole for a drink, she saw an odd reflection in the water.
“Oh!” Opa exclaimed, “how odd, an unspotted, spotless leopard”. Then she realised she was looking at her own reflection! She was now completely, totally and utterly spotless! “Me, an unspotted, spotless leopard? Oh dear, oh dear…I must have landed so hard it shook my spots off. I'll never hear the last of this.” Opa returned to the piles of black splodges hoping to roll in them and get them back on. It was no use though. The Meerkat family had gathered up all the splodges and were now wearing them as a fashion accessory. They refused to give them back. Finders-keepers they shouted from their holes in the ground.
A passing teenage hyena by the name of Nelson stopped, laughed and shouted,
“Haw, Haw, you’ve lost all your spots.”
Soon a large crowd of animals gathered to stare at the strange sight of a spotless leopard. A shoal of infant lionfish on a school field trip was told to cover their eyes; “My goodness, a naked leopard. Cover your eyes children,” said their teacher.
Saddened and tearful, Opa shuffled off into the dark recesses of the forest. What good was a leopard without spots she sobbed to herself, she was now Opa-the-unspotted-spotless-leopard.
And there our story would have ended had it not been for a passing explorer who had become lost in the deepest, darkest dark bit of the Lost Forest. Luckily his mother had packed a torch and some sandwiches for him…
“Stop shining that torch in my eyes,” complained Opa, who had been hanging upside down from a branch by her tail for several weeks now.
“Aha,” said the passing explorer stepping closer, “The undiscovered, unknown giant tree hanging bat. I shall name you, Tree-us Hangus Bat. You’re not vampire are you?”
Opa dropped to the ground. “I’m a leopard actually,” she said feeling quite dizzy as the blood returned to her legs and feet.
“Hmm… not a giant tree hanging bat at all but perhaps a lioness who has had a bump on the head and now thinks she’s a leopard?” said the passing explorer, “or are you just a spotless leopard?”
Opa groaned, “I know I’m an unspotted, spotless leopard. That’s why I’m in the deepest, darkest part of the forest, hiding.” Then she smiled and flashed her teeth. “Or maybe I am the unknown giant tree hanging vampire bat?”
The passing explorer screamed, dropped his torch, and ran off into an even deeper and darker part of the forest. Many years later when he eventually returned home, late for his tea, he would tell his mum he had discovered the long lost, unknown and undiscovered Giant Tree Hanging Vampire Bat of The Lost Forest. Of course she didn’t believe him and sent him straight to bed on account of his not having sent her a postcard.
However, this did not help Opa. Nor did a passing vacationing Polar Bear. “I was told to turn left at the spotless leopard. Is that you? Is this way north? I need to get home. I think I left the ice flowing.”
Strange place for a polar bear thought Opa…then she tripped over a very large pipe…
“Ah yes,” said the leaves. “We would have warned about that but we’re not part of the story so you’ll have to find out yourself.”
At that very moment a baboon fell through the trees and landed in a crumpled heap on the ground. Dusting himself off and