Entry tags:

era: silver age, theme: funny animals

Walt Kelly's "Mouse Into Elephant"


What an ODD little story. This first appeared (as far as I can tell) in the 1966 THE POGO POOP BOOK. Walt Kelly took advantage of these collections to publish some of his more offbeat and experimental stories. "Mouse Into Elephant" is fourteen pages long, done in pencil. A mouse named "Gnot-even" is protesting that mice are treated like a minority, while elephants are loved by everyone. "Us mice have to live in holes and eat what we steal-- we're an Oppressed Majority." This mouse goes to Frump, a powerful fairy who seems to be a derelict woman living in an alley and drinking ketchup out the bottle. Frump thinks it's a good idea. She does magic, and mice and elephants switch sizes.

But the mice find people still hate them, and now they're out in the rain with no place to live. Meanwhile the elephants have a career in show business ahead of them (rather exploited, it seems). Gnot-even pleads tearfully to Frump, who restores everything back the way it was. The moral is... well, I'm not sure what the moral is, even if there is one. Frump observes, "We could always deliver a miracle-- but would we want to live with it?"