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My family, and the jackal's family. We go way back. His great-grandfather and my great-grandfather were always up to some sort of trouble. I blame the jackal. My great-grandfather, Mortie, was a quiet sort of guy. Quiet, but always willing to help out a friend. Stu (that was the jackal's name) always tried to take advantage of his generosity and kind heart. The worst time was the mess with the panther.

Mortie and Stu were walking down the road on the way to take a dip in the river. On the way, Stu the jackal saw a big pile of corn stacked near the gate of the village by the river. "Look at all that corn, Mortie," he said. "Let's go eat some. They'll never notice it's missing."

Mortie, being the amicable guy that he was, agreed hesitantly. They started their trot over to the corn when they were met in the road by a big panther.

"Excuse me," the panther said, stopping them, "but I have to tell you that your shoes are amazing."

The jackal was wearing a pair of duct tape shoes he had put together in his spare time.

"Gee, thanks," said Stu, his crafty, scheming mind already turning. "I made them myself."

"Oh, really?" the panther replied. "Could you make a pair like that for me? They're so stylish, and I'm sure they would keep the heat off of my poor paws."

Mortie rolled his eyes. He could see that this situation would come to no good. Stu was such a devilish rogue that there was no way he would go out of his way to help a stranger, especially without getting something out of it.

"I'll tell you what, if you go and kill a cow, I'll eat the flesh to get rid of it all and then I can make your shoes. I need the special stomach lining of the cow for the soles," said Stu.

The panther immediately lept into the village, killed a cow, and dragged it over to the pair. While Stu feasted on the cow, Mortie took a few morsels for himself. After they had eaten, Stu started to make the shoes for the panther. He crafted them together out of the stomach lining of the cow and some dirt from the road. The panther was so excited when they were finished he tried them on immediately. "A perfect fit!" he cried.

"There are some special, shoe-breaking-in instructions I have to give you," said Stu. "Go over to the field and lie in the sun so that your shoes can conform to your paws. After three hours, they will be ready to go."

"Thank you so much!" said the panther. Humming, he skipped happily away to follow the instructions. As soon as the panther was out of earshot, Mortie said, "Stu, are you crazy? If those shoes already fit him, and he lies out in the sun in them for hours, the wet lining and dirt is going to shrink and squeeze his paws!"

Stu grinned. "Yup."

Mortie sighed.

Three hours later, the panther woke up from his nap. When he tried to get up and walk, he screamed in pain. "That jackal! These shoes are agonizing! Quick, birds of the field, help me!"

The birds of the field came to his aid and pecked the shoes off of his feet. As he stalked off into the field, the panther tried to control his anger. The jackal was smart, but the edge of his anger convinced the panther that he could outsmart the jackal.

The next day, the panther gave party invitations to the birds of the field to deliver. They were invitations for all hedgehogs and jackals to attend a feast. The menu--cow.

Mortie walked over to Stu's place with his invitation in hand. "Stu, this has to be some sort of a trap. Who would give a random feast of cow, the food that we ate when you tricked that panther, for only hedgehogs and jackals? I think the panther is out to get us. I'm not going to this thing and neither should you."

Stu laughed. "That panther isn't so smart. Don't I look like every other jackal out there? I'll go and eat his cow AGAIN, and then laugh at you for not coming."

"As you wish," said Mortie, "but I think I'll be the one laughing in the end."

Mortie didn't have a swimming buddy after that day."

A hedgehog like Mortie looking for a tasty treat. Websource.
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Author's Note: I retold The Adventures of a Jackal from the point of view of the hedgehog's great-grandson. The hedgehog gets only a cursory mention in the original story, but is one of the main characters in my version. Since hedgehogs are such wise creatures, I knew that any hedgehog involved with the trickster jackal would be one step ahead of him. So, I made Mortie the "brains" of the operation. I changed several of the details in the section about how the jackal made the panther's shoes--in the original, the shoes are made from the skin of the cow, but I wanted to update the language and make it simpler, because the original story is a little complicated in that section.

This story gives Walter, our hedgehog exchange student, some insight into the relationship between jackals and hedgehogs in Africa. The trickster jackal would have taken Mortie along to the feast without a second thought, but wise Mortie chose to miss the feast in favor of keeping his life. In the original, the jackal merely loses his tail, but I decided to take a graver turn to reflect the consquences of poor decisions. The death of the jackal is much more dramatic than the loss of a tail, and makes the story more meaningful on a symbolic level.

Bibliography: Lang, Andrew. "The Adventures of a Jackal." Orange Fairy Book, 1906.

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