One night, a hedgehog was scanning the sky with his telescope, when he saw what seemed to be a spaceship flying to the moon. When he managed to properly focus on it, he found out that it was a craft belonging to an unfortunate Martian who seemed to have had an accident, and had to make an emergency landing on the moon.
The hedgehog realised that surely only he himself had seen this, so he decided to try to save the Martian. He called together a few animals to help. They couldn’t think what to do, so they called for more and more animals to join in. In the end, practically everyone in the forest was involved. It occurred to them that if they stood on top of each other, they could build a big tower and perhaps reach the moon.
That proved somewhat difficult, and most animals ended up having had a finger in their eye, someone’s foot in their ear, and numerous bumps on the head.
However, after much perseverance, they finally reached the moon and rescued the Martian. Most unfortunately, while he was coming down the tower of animals, the bear couldn’t help sneezing. He happened to be allergic to moon dust.
The whole tower crashed to Earth with a great din comprising howls, roars, and other assorted animal cries. Seeing all this, the Martian thought that the animals would very angry with him because they would blame it all on him.
But it was just the opposite. As they recovered from the fall, the animals jumped and clapped with joy, happy to have achieved something so difficult together. The whole day was spent partying.
The Martian observed everything, and when he returned to his planet the other Martians were astonished at what had happened. And so it was that those simple and helpful animals taught the Martians the importance of working together, joyfully, in a team. Since then, Martians no longer travel alone during their journeys through space. Now they go in groups, always willing to help each other, and make sacrifices whenever necessary.
Moral of the story – The satisfaction of working together in friendship is much greater than the minor inconveniences it brings.
By Pedro Pablo Sacristán
