Reading Notes: Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops, Part B

• Poor man and woman have 12 daughters that they don't love anymore so they try to get away from them
• The father took them out to hunt; they sat down when they got tired
• Asked the girls to get water for him with a bamboo joint; they struggled & came back to realize he was gone
• They figured out their parents didn't want them anymore because the basket they brought was filled with ash & little rice; with no way out, they decided to sleep in the jungle 
• As they woke up, they found a woman nearby; asked her for help & she offered them a place to stay in exchange to keep her daughter company because she is always gone, of which they accepted
• They traveled to her home & found a small garden that they could visit, but could not enter when she was gone to the jungle the entire time
• They didn't enter the garden the first time because she was gone all day, the second time they thought she would be gone all day so they entered the garden and found human bones realizing the woman was a cannibal
• They fled her home and ran into a cow, asking it for help; the cow opened its mouth & they jump in, when the cow came home, it ran into the woman that asked for the maidens, but it replied no
• She threatened to kill it if he lied but he pointed a different direction showing where the maidens went; when the woman left so did the maidens
• As the maidens were fleeing, they ran into an elephant & asked it for help from the cannibal
• The elephant opened it's mouth & the maidens jumped in but 1 maiden left a garment hang out of the elephant's mouth
• They ran into the cannibal woman again & she asked if it saw the maidens head towards the city, but he lied & said no; the maiden saw the garment & cursed the elephant to have a drooping lip much like the garment, forever.

(Smiling Elephant and family.  Pixabay.)

This is a tough story to recreate.  Rather than there being 12 daughters, there can be about 3-5 daughters because the parents tried for a son but couldn't get any.  Set in modern day, the parents are ready to send their kids off to college, not abandoning them.  In a sense, the kids can abandon the parents.

The woman will not be a cannibal, but a woman who is doing research on random strangers.  She owns a zoo, so she tricks some people that she chooses to keep.

The girls happen to go on a zoo trip for class, a couple of them in the same course & the others just meet up with them.  They happen to go searching around the zoo, being nosy & find another girl (supposedly her daughter) but she is trapped.

Maybe they get caught & try to escape...but how to incorporate the elephant's lips drooping.  Quite possibly each animal can talk.  Two sisters can understand animals vs the other sisters having different powers.  That is if we incorporate powers because the elephant must talk.

If the elephant talks and lies then the woman will clamp the lip in order for it to stay drooping.  Much like the face of a dumbfounded elephant.  Punishment for lying, since she doesn't have powers, but only the girls do. 

Bibliography:  Laos Folk-Lore:  Why the Lip of the Elephant Droops by Katherine Neville Fleeson.