how to build a house

Once upon a time there lived four friends – a bear, a deer, a giraffe and a lion. Although wildly different they all had one thing in common, they all wanted to build a house. But, there was one problem – none of them knew how to build a house.

It was the deer who came up with the idea of building a house. He was the one who always found something for them to do, something fun, something that they hadn’t done before. The deer was the youngest of the four and the most energetic. It was only on rare occasions that you would find him sitting quietly. The deer would jump over the surprisingly calm lion as he lay sprawled on the ground, spending his afternoons doing what he loved the most – sleeping, would snatch the blade of grass the bear had been examining and prance between the giraffe’s spindly legs, taunting the bear. The bear would give chase for a while, never being able to catch up with the fleet-footed deer and then sit, looking very sullen, with his back turned to the other three. The lion would peer at the others’ antics through one eye, yawn, and roll over and fall asleep the next moment. The giraffe looked upon the deer’s tricks and smile to himself, chewing on the fresh green leaves that he kept plucking off the tallest trees that were around. But, this is not a story about four friends; it is about the house they built.

“Let’s build a house,” said the deer, throwing a fistful of dirt at the bear and then rudely jumping onto the snoring lion’s back.
The lion growled at the deer as it pranced around, under and over the rest.
“Another one of your bright ideas?” rumbled the lion. “Do you remember what happened the last time we did what you wanted us to?”
“This is different. We don’t have to go anywhere. No one will mind a house built here.”
“That’s just what you said when you wanted to see what’s on the other side of the river.”
“Think about…”
“No. Don’t you ever sleep?”
The deer moved away from the lion but he couldn’t stop prancing around muttering silently to himself, as he kept getting more excited about the idea every second. He could barely contain the excitement within his delicate body.
“But, think about it – it would be so…”
“No,” growled the lion. “Remember the other side of the river? Wasn’t that supposed to be great too? Do you remember the wolves? Remember their red eyes? Remember the trouble I had to go through to keep you from being eaten alive?”
“Just think about it,” said the deer.
The giraffe kept chewing on his leaves, and he thought about it.
The bear kept looking at the little ladybug that had landed on the ground, between his paws, and he thought about it.
The lion rolled over again and thought about it, though he would never tell anyone that or show any sign of interest in the deer’s ideas.

They would probably have thought of several things if the deer had let them be for a few moments, but in just a few seconds he was jumping around all over again, talking about the house again.
“The house will be red and white and small, there’ll be a small garden in front, and a chimney on the roof, and, and…there’ll be nice trees in the garden, with leaves that are tender and there’ll be books in the small library,” he said spinning towards the giraffe.
“And, there’ll be a honeycomb in the trees for you bear, for the bees will never be able to resist the beautifully coloured flowers in our garden. You would like that, wouldn’t you? Fresh honey! And beautiful paintings on all the walls in the house.”
“And for you lion,” he said, tiptoeing around the beast lying on the soft grass, “there will be a fireplace, before which there will be a rug softer than the grass you lie on, and you can curl up and sleep there. And, there will be a kitchen. We’ll cook the most delicious dishes and we’ll have a study where we’ll sit after dinner and sip hot chocolate and read, and we’ll write and discuss our stories, our poems…”

The deer looked around at his friends with nervous anticipation. He needed them and more than that he wanted to build a house with them, live in it with them, have a home where he knew he could be happy.

There was a silence that hung in the air – the lion continued to act disinterested and the giraffe kept looking at the distant horizon, chewing contentedly. The bear spoke first, “How will we build the house?”
There was a twinkle in the bear’s eyes. He could see the house. It wouldn’t take the others long to follow. The giraffe nodded quietly when the deer asked him about the house again. The lion sighed and made a show of how he thought the idea was stupid but the others knew he was just acting.
“What do you think we’ll need?” asked the giraffe.
“Well, we’ll need wood, won’t we? Wait, I’ll write it down” said the bear. He ran off to get some pen and paper. He returned soon. “And we need hammers, and nails, and saws, and…”
They made a long list. It was so long that the bear had to run back to his cave to get some more paper. When it was done they looked at the lion. He rolled his eyes and said, “All right, I’ll call the hyenas and tell them to get everything from the village.”

They waited for the hyenas to return and in the meantime decided what exactly the house would look like, and what flowers they would plant, and where each painting would be hung. Even the lion joined in and everything was planned perfectly. And before they knew it, the hyenas were back. Now they had to just put everything together.

They put up the frame, all four becoming one to create the frail skeleton of their soon-to-be-beautiful house. Once that was done, the giraffe hoisted the lion on one of the beams and then became a crane for getting material up to the lion. The deer would run around breathlessly, telling everyone what the house looked like from a distance and bringing material up to the bear who would hand it to the giraffe. The four friends worked relentlessly and before long there stood a house – red and white and small, with a chimney on the roof and a library inside and also a nice kitchen and a little fireplace with a rug in front of it and paintings on the walls and books everywhere. All in all it was, quite simply put, the nicest, cosiest, most welcoming house I have ever seen.

The garden would need more time though. That, they wouldn’t be able to create instantly but the four friends knew that it was only a matter of time before it would bloom with flowers of all shapes and of all colours.

So, the next time you walk through a forest and see a red and white house with a chimney on its roof and nice garden in front, remember that it’s there only because a few friends decided that it should be there.