Elva couldn’t understand it. She had seen pictures of lions before, contained within the books in school, and they usually looked extremely dangerous. So, when her parents informed her that a lion had appeared outside their house, and was in fact, dancing, Elva could scarcely believe how calm everyone in the family was when they knew.
‘Why did they want to go outside to greet the lion and throw things in its mouth?’ Elva wondered. Elva thought there were some major differences between what she saw in the books at school and the purported lion outside her home. ‘Perhaps this is a different type of lion,’ thought Elva.
The lion did seem harmless enough. It danced for a while and her family seemed to be tossing what looked like oranges into its mouth. At school the next day, as Elva was recounting this tale with others, the little girl was asked if she would have ever tossed an orange into that lion’s mouth. “No! It’s a lion!” Elva responded, with a vigourous shake of the head, and a look of incredulity.