How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin

On a hot little island in the sea, there lived a man. And the man was a baker.

One morning the baker baked a great big currant cake. Round and brown and warm and sweet. Two feet across it was. Three feet thick.

Just as the baker was ready to eat his cake — clomp, clomp, clomp — down came a Rhinoceros.

In those days the Rhinoceros had beautiful smooth skin. Not a wrinkle in it. It fit him snug, buttoned up underneath with three big buttons.

'Cake!' said the Rhinoceros. And he snatched it. He scooped the cake right onto his horn, and gobbled it down. Every crumb.

Then he clomped away, waving his tail, without so much as a thank-you.

Five weeks later, on a boiling hot day, the Rhinoceros came down to the beach for a swim. It was so hot he undid his three buttons and took his whole skin off. He left it on the sand and splashed into the sea.

Now the baker had been watching, remember. And he had a plan.

He crept down. He picked up the skin. He filled it with cake crumbs. Old crumbs, dry crumbs, tickly-scritchy crumbs. Then he put the skin back exactly where the Rhinoceros had left it.

Out came the Rhinoceros. On went his skin. Up did the three buttons.

And oh! The itch! The itch! The itch!

He rubbed. He rolled. He rubbed some more. He rubbed and rubbed against a palm tree. The buttons rubbed clean off. His skin rubbed into folds. And still the crumbs were inside, and still they tickled.

From that day to this, every rhinoceros has folds in his skin and a very bad temper. All because of the cake.