[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A proud moment for the school as our Dipsite Laksh Jindal of Class IV G, participated in the Story writing competition for the ‘EduEnviro Group’, and won 3rd position out of 5 finalists in his age group. He also won an Amazon voucher of ₹400 for the same.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”6561″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”6560″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][stm_title title_tag=”h3″ sep_enable=”true” title=”Greenie Saved the Jungle | Author: Laksh Jindal, IV- G”][/stm_title][vc_column_text]

I am Greenie the tallest tree of the African Safari and this is about the story of my best friends Dodo the Monkey, Mounty the Giraffe and Jumbo the Elephant. We all used to live happily and our days were full of fun playing different games. Jumbo used to play water games with us by throwing water, Dodo used to climb on my branches and the favorite past time for Mounty and everyone was playing hide & seek in the big green bushy trees of the African Safari.
One day, while we were playing hide and seek, Dodo and his friends saw some humans entering through the jungle. As those humans came inside, they climbed on top of me to get a full view of the jungle. They started looking around the jungle with their binoculars and started discussing something. As my ears were covered by some of the bird nests, I could hardly hear their discussion but since Mounty was hiding beside me, I slowly whispered “Hey Mounty… shush… please hear it carefully as they are sounding bit fishy.”

Mounty slowly slid his ears closer to the branches where those humans were sitting.
One of the humans, who seem to be their boss, said “Tomorrow we will start cutting all the smaller trees first. Once all smaller trees are cut, we will cut bigger trees to start our paper industry in this jungle”.
Hearing this, Mounty got shocked and he was looking terrified. Soon after humans left the jungle, I asked Mounty “Hey Mounty… get up… What happened? Are you alright?”

Mounty was nervous and he replied “We are going to be homeless soon and I am afraid these people are making plans to kill you and many of your tree friends”. Dodo also started shivering and said “Now where are we going to live!? We need to do something to stop this.” We kept discussing our plans and slowly we started feeling sleepy as it was night.

Early next morning, when we all woke up, we saw those humans coming to our jungle, but this time they had axes and cutters in their hands. I started feeling scared thinking that it could be my last day, but soon I realized that they started cutting some bushes and the smaller trees as per their plan. Dodo, Mounty and Jumbo, along with other animals were hiding in their homes as they knew it won’t be good to be seen by these humans.

By the evening, those people have cut more than fifty trees who were my family and they started moving towards the other side of the jungle where none of the animals used to go as there was a big castle and sometimes humans were also seen there.

As humans were walking away from me, I realized Dodo and Mounty came to me and said “Hi Greenie, we are sorry that you’ve lost your family members but we have a plan. We can follow the humans to see where they are going and what they will do with the trees they’ve cut”.

By the time Jumbo was also there and he said “We will not let anyone harm you anymore and we will do our best to save you & our jungle from there evil interests.” I was very sad but started feeling hopeful after hearing their plan. My friends Dodo, Mounty and Jumbo started following the humans. It was getting dark, so humans couldn’t notice that they were followed by my friends. After sometime, I saw all my friends coming back and they told exactly what I was expecting. Jumbo said “Greenie, we followed the humans till the end and we’ve found that humans are storing the trees cut by them inside the castle”.

When I heard about castle I reminded myself about an old friend of mine and said to Jumbo, “Hey Jumbo, I have a very old friend, Wissey the wise owl, who used to live on my branches with his parents. I remember he knows some of the wizards who might be able to help us. You can find him near the castle as he moved there with his family so that they can get their food easily”.

Dodo, Mounty and Jumbo quickly went towards the castle and found an old tree where Wissey was living. Mounty being the oldest amongst Dodo and Jumbo started the conversation and said “Hi Wissey, we are the friends of Greenie who has sent us to ask for your help as he and his family is in big danger.”

Wissey who was very kind, quickly agreed to help his old friend and said “I know one of the wizard who has the special magical powers and I am sure he will be able to help you. He lives on the mountain after crossing the castle”.

They all went to the mountain and Wissey introduced the Wizard. The Wizard gave them a special magic wand and said “I cannot bring back the trees that have been cut but if the root of trees are there, I can bring life to those trees. You just need to say the magical spells with this wand over the roots of those trees.”

After taking the magic wand, my friends returned back to me and told how they met Wissey and Wizard and got the wand. Hearing this, we all were very happy and we all planned to grow back those trees next day so that my family members can get their life back. The next day early morning, when Dodo, Mounty and Jumbo were about to start the magic to grow back my family trees, we suddenly saw that the humans were coming back to cut more trees and this time they were accompanied with their families to show the jungle. Their boss told them to start cutting the bigger trees which were on the banks of a river.

We were all sad and my friends hidden themselves away from the humans. Now I didn’t had much choice but to simply wait to lose more of my family members and waiting for evening so that we can plan ahead once humans will go out from the jungle. 

While the humans were cutting the trees, the baby of their boss, who was playing near the banks of river, fell into the river. Everyone started shouting for help, their boss started crying but nobody was helping because of the deep river and its flow.

Dodo who was hiding nearby, quickly came out for help and said to their boss “Don’t worry, I know how it feels to loose someone from your family and I will save your child“.
I asked Dodo to pull one of my branches into the river where the baby was drowning. The baby quickly caught my branch and at the same time Jumbo grabbed him with his trunk and took him out of the river. The boss was crying with guilt and said to both of us “You have saved my child’s life. Now I realized how hard it could be to lose your loved ones and I am really sorry for what we did to your jungle. Please tell me dear friend what can we do for you? We will do anything that you want”. 

Since Mounty was the most intelligent amongst us, he said to them “Hey friend, forests are our home and we all live here happily. By cutting them, you not only destroy our habitats, which leads to ecosystem imbalance but also create bigger problems for all the living beings like floods, loss of oxygen levels and global warming. If you really want to help us, promise that you will not cut our jungle and ask your human friends to not do the same again and build any industry here”. 

The boss promised Mounty and said “Thank you dear friend, I promise that none of us will come to your jungle or harm your habitat. Now that we can’t put life to the trees that we’ve already cut, can we offer you to build a fence outside the jungle with those wood logs so that other humans could not easily come into your jungle to kill your friends or cut the trees?”

We all were very happy to hear this and agreed for them to build the fence. 

The humans went away and started building the fence. Dodo, Mounty, Jumbo and I started using the magic wand to grow back my family trees. We started saying the spells and as soon Dodo used the magic wand over the roots of chopped trees, they started growing back to their life.  I got my family back and we also had the fence around the African Safari, so we all were safe. We thanked those humans and finally came back to their homes and lived happily ever after.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]