Pasha Has a Problem

Pasha the Indian elephant woke up one morning and heaved himself off his bed. He plodded to the mirror and rubbed his eyes. “Dear me,” he said. “I’m peeling all over!”

Pasha was quite worried, so he called his new friend, Cookie the kookaburra to pay him a visit. The little bird laughed when he saw the blotchy elephant.

“It’s just sunburn, Pasha,” he said. “Don’t you know you must use sunscreen lotion?”

“Thank goodness,” said Pasha in relief, and he blew a sigh down his long trunk. “I was afraid I was turning into a snake – only snakes shed skin back home.”

So Pasha went down to Coles, his favourite supermarket, and bought a big tube of sunscreen lotion (SPF 30).

“One teaspoon on each leg,” he said, reading the instructions out loud. He squirted a bit onto his trunk and rubbed it over his feet. Of course, elephant feet are rather large, and one teaspoon didn’t go a long way. He soon ran out of sunscreen, so it was back to Coles for more.

When he was done, he looked in the mirror. “I’ve heard of white elephants before,” he said to himself, “but this is ridiculous!”

But the sunscreen didn’t work very well, because the next day poor Pasha woke up with stinging arms and more peeling skin.

“I look like the paperbark tree at Perth University,” he moaned to Cookie.

In fact, the white elephant was now turning pink in patches where the skin had come off.

“Perhaps you should wear a hat,” said Cookie.

So the next morning Pasha put on his best flowery hat (which reminded him of dessert) and ambled off to the uni. Whoosh! A gust of wind swept the hat off his floppy ears and up into a tall pine tree.

“Hoo...hoo...” whistled the wind, as Pasha huffed and puffed and tried to reach his hat. “Come and get it!”

“I most certainly won’t,” said Pasha crossly, and he trundled off feeling out of sorts. By the time Cookie rescued the hat for him, it was far too torn to be used again.

“You need an umbrella,” said Cookie. “Look, I’ll get you a nice large one as a welcome-to-Perth present.”

So Pasha was soon the proud owner of a big red umbrella with blue flowers. He wrapped his trunk around it and marched to campus proudly. The wind couldn’t snatch it away, for an elephant’s trunk is very strong.

You just might catch sight of a red umbrella bobbing over the crowds of students at Perth University. If there’s an elephant underneath, you’ll know it’s Pasha.