In the leafy crown of a tamala tree, a sparrow and her husband had built their nest, and the little hen sat warming her eggs, dreaming of the day they would hatch. But that summer a proud elephant, maddened by the heat, came crashing through the forest. Craving shade, he stood beneath the tamala tree and, in sheer wilfulness, seized the very branch that held the nest and tore it down. The eggs were shattered; the little birds barely escaped with their lives.
The sparrow wept as though her heart would break. Her friend the woodpecker came to comfort her. “What is done is done, dear friend,” he said gently. “The wise do not mourn the past forever. Come, let us see whether small folk together cannot answer this mighty wrong.” The woodpecker sought his friend Veenarava the fly, and the fly brought her friend Meghanada the frog, and the four small creatures sat in council against the mountain-sized elephant.
The frog laid out the plan. “At noon, when the elephant dozes, let the fly hum her sweetest tune in his ear. He will close his eyes in delight. Then the woodpecker must strike at his eyes till he cannot see. Half-blind and burning with thirst, he will hear my croaking and think — where frogs call, water must be. I shall sit at the edge of the great pit, and he will follow my voice.”
And so it happened. The fly hummed like a veena, the elephant shut his eyes in bliss, and the woodpecker's beak flashed until the great beast could see nothing at all. Scorched by the midday sun and wild with thirst, he heard frog-song rising ahead and stumbled gratefully toward it — straight over the edge of the deep pit, where his pride ended forever. The sparrow looked on with her friends, and the forest whispered the lesson for ages after: even the mightiest should never scorn the small, for wit, unity and purpose make the little ones great.