The Monkey and the Crocodile

High in a riverside tree lived a monkey. Crocodiles filled the water below. One she-crocodile had stared up at the monkeys for many days. At last she told her son she craved a monkey’s heart for food and ordered him to bring her one.

He objected that he could not walk on land while monkeys would not enter the river. She told him to use his brain. After long thought he remembered the monkey who longed for ripe fruit on an island across the current. That greed, he decided, would be the bait.

He swam under the tree and called upward, inviting the monkey to the island of ripe fruit. The monkey answered that he could not swim. The crocodile offered his own back as a ferry. Tempted by the fruit, the monkey climbed down and settled on the scaly ridge. They pushed off. The monkey praised the ride; the crocodile asked how he liked a sudden dive—and plunged.

Underwater the monkey clung on, terrified. When they surfaced he coughed and demanded an explanation. The crocodile confessed: he meant to drown him because his mother wanted a monkey heart. The monkey answered as if surprised by a simple mistake—had he known a heart was required, he would have fetched it from the tree, for he had left it hanging there. The dull crocodile believed him. The monkey then urged a stop at the fruitful island first; the crocodile refused and turned straight back toward the home tree, insisting on the heart at once.

The monkey agreed. The instant his feet touched the bank he flashed up into the branches. From the highest limbs he mocked the crocodile: the heart was here aloft—come and take it if he could.

Soon afterward the monkey left that tree, hoping for quiet farther along the river. The crocodile tracked him to a new home. Midway to another fruit island a broad rock stuck out of the water; the monkey’s path was bank, rock, island. The crocodile watched the route and planned to seize him at dusk on the return. All day the monkey ate while the hunter circled. Near nightfall the crocodile climbed onto the rock and lay motionless.

When shadows thickened, the monkey started home, reached the island’s shore, and halted. The rock looked taller than usual—something lay upon it. Still he tested his guess. He called a greeting to the rock. Silence. He called again. A third time. Then he asked why his rocky friend gave no answer that evening.

The crocodile, sure that stones reply after dark, answered in the rock’s place. The monkey laughed and named him. The crocodile admitted the ambush and promised a kill. Cornered for the moment, the monkey pretended surrender: “Open wide,” he said, “and I will leap into your jaws, for no other road home remains.”

In this tale, the monkey counts on the crocodile closing his eyes when he stretches his mouth. The hunter yawned blindly on the rock. The monkey sprang—not inward but onto the snout—and from there to the bank, then into the safety of the tree. The crocodile, outwitted twice, admitted the monkey’s cunning and vowed to leave him alone. The monkey thanked him and added that he would keep watch all the same.

About this telling

“The Monkey and the Crocodile” follows Ellen C. Babbitt’s public-domain retelling in her Jataka Tales (Century, 1912; Project Gutenberg ebook 62514), drawn from the Buddhist birth-story tradition of a monkey who outwits a crocodile that wants his heart.

Babbitt’s clear scenes—the fruit invitation, the midstream confession, the heart-in-the-tree ruse, and the later rock trick—are the beats kept here. Related crocodile–monkey tellings also appear in the Panchatantra.

Read the original: Babbitt, Jataka Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 — a full river crossing, a cruel plan, and two witty escapes.

A closer reading

The first escape changes the crocodile’s plan by giving him a false explanation for returning to the bank. The second begins with observation: the familiar rock looks taller. The monkey tests that difference with speech, then uses the crocodile’s demand for surrender as an opening for escape.

The final promise does not erase the repeated pursuit. The monkey thanks the crocodile yet says he will remain watchful. That ending distinguishes polite acknowledgment from restored trust. The story’s claim about a crocodile’s eyes belongs to its trick, rather than providing a reliable wildlife rule.

Try this with the story

Draw the routes of both escapes: tree to river and back; island to rock to bank. Label where the monkey gains information and where he acts on it. Explain why the second route requires a different trick.

Questions to ask

• What does the crocodile believe about the heart?
• Which change in the rock makes the monkey suspicious?
• Why does the monkey remain watchful after the final promise?

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