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The Bear Who Lost His Tail

by Ion Creanga

Retold by Irina V. and Cristiana I. (7th grade A- School No.191, Bucharest, Romania)

Artwork by Andreea Grigorie (7th grade B)

        Once upon a time there was a peasant who lived with his wife somewhere in the mountains in the north of Romania. Every winter his wife used to complain about cold and ask her husband to bring her a fur coat to keep her warm.

         One day while he was coming back home with a bag full of fish he saw a fox lying in the road. He thought she was dead and decided to take her and make a nice warm fur coat for his wife.

So, he put the fox at the back of his cart, next to the fish. But the fox wasn't really dead. When she was sure that the man wasn't looking she took the fish from the bag and threw them one by one in the road. Then she jumped out of the cart and went back along the road and put the fish back into the bag.

On her way back home she met a hungry bear who asked her to give him some fish because he was very hungry. The fox told him that she had worked hard to get the fish and couldn't give him any for free. She advised him to go and catch some for himself. Here is what the fox told him to do: "Go to the lake, late at night and make a hole in the ice. Then sit next to the hole and put your tail into the water and stay there the whole night. In the morning your tail will be full of fish."

         The stupid bear did what the fox told him. In the morning when he woke up he discovered he couldn't stand up. He pulled his tail out of the ice so hard that it broke and he started shouting: "Oh, my poor tail, my poor tail is broken!"

He got angry with the fox and went to her. She started laughing at him and then he realized that the fox had told him a lie.

          Finally, the poor bear came back home without his beautiful long bushy tail.

Ion Creanga is a well-known Romanian writer. He was born in 1873 at Humulesti, in northern Moldavia. All the children love his works, especially his tales: The Bear Who Lost His Tail, The Mother with Three Daughters-in-Law, The Purse with Two Coppers, The Goat with Her Three Kids, The Tale of Harap-Alb etc.

His best work is Memories of My Childhood which evokes the village of his childhood with its people and customs.

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© Project coordinator: Andreea Silter, Department of English, School No. 191, Bucharest, Romania

 Last updated: 03/05/2008