Creative Project

Here are some trickster tales for you guys.  keep in mind that I tried to mimic the flow and vocabulary of the ones we read.

Coyote’s Wife gets Jealous

            Once, when the weather was mild and the animals were bored with hunting, fishing, and farming, they decided to create something new.  Frog suggested that they all go for a swim.  Many of the animals agreed, but Coyote shouted over them to disagree.  “Wait!” he said.  “I cannot swim very well.  We should do something we can all enjoy.”

“But what can we all do?” Hawk asked Coyote.  All the animals cried out their ideas.  Coyote disagreed with each and every one.  Some of them would have worked, but Coyote was too lazy to do them.  “Let’s fly!” mosquito said.

            “I have no wings,” Coyote countered.

“We will dig holes,” Mole proposed.

            “My claws are too small for that,” Coyote complained.  “I know what we can all do.”  All the animals leaned in to hear his suggestion.  “We can all copulate,” he said.  “We will pick partners so that we always have someone to do it with!”  The animals immediately agreed and started to pair up.  All of their feet kicked up a cloud of dust that obscured the crowd.  Coyote could not see anything, so he walked slowly forward and reached out with his hands to grab any animal that came by.  “Wait!” he shouted pointlessly.  “This was my idea, I should pick first,” he pleaded, but the animals were too busy running around and picking the attractive partners.

            By the time the dust cleared, everyone except Coyote had a partner and was leaving towards their huts for privacy.  “Is there nobody left?” Coyote howled.  He saw the Moon and even though it wasn’t an animal he asked it if it would be his partner.  The Moon was so repulsed that it fled to the highest part of the sky, so from then on Moon’s light was much weaker than the Sun’s.

            “I do not want to be alone,” Coyote whimpered.

“I will be your partner,” a voice said from behind him.  Coyote smiled and turned around.  The voice had come from a female Coyote who was very ugly.  She had a long nose covered in fur, yellow teeth, and pointy ears.  Coyote’s smile withered.

            “You are too ugly,” Coyote said smugly.  “I cannot copulate with someone so ugly.”  Suddenly the Moon’s laughter fell down from the sky like warm rain.

            “You do not have a choice,” the Moon said.  It turns out Moon had been watching the other animals and noticed that after they copulated, they decided to stay with each other for the rest of their lives.  “The other animals are calling it marriage,” Moon said.  “This female Coyote is now your wife and you can’t copulate with anyone else!”  Hawk overheard this and told all the other animals to add roofs to their huts so that Moon could not watch them in their private moments.  That is why all good shelters have tops.

            “I promise to love you for my entire life,” Coyote’s new wife said, quivering with joy.

“No,” Coyote said.  “Just because I’m stuck with you doesn’t mean we have to copulate.  I will never be with someone so ugly.  I will instead look at everyone else’s wives and pretend they are mine.  For a pretend beautiful woman is better than a real one like you.”

            So some time passed, with Coyote’s wife growing sadder and sadder.  Even though he was hateful, she loved him.  Instead of getting angry at him, she chose to be mad at every woman Coyote looked at with lust.  She was mad at Beaver’s wife for her thin body, Turtle’s wife for her beautiful hair, and Rabbit’s wife for her bright smile.  She spent many nights thinking of ways to make Coyote love her.  One day she was washing Coyote’s clothes in the river when she noticed what the ripples did to her reflection.  Whenever a ripple went by her face looked strange and twisted. 

            “I can use these!” she realized out loud.  Coyote’s wife picked up the ripples and put them in her bag.  Then she ran around the village and threw them in the face over wife in the village.  She threw ripples at Beaver and when they passed over her they stretched her teeth out and made her look fat.  She threw some at Turtle’s wife and made her look like she had small beady eyes and no hair at all.  She threw them at Rabbit’s wife, which stretched her ears out quite far.  Now all the animals in the village had ugly wives and there was no one for Coyote to imagine himself with.  Defeated, Coyote copulated with his wife that night.

            The animals soon learned that they could make children this way and they did.  Every child inherited its mother’s ripples, which is why all the animals look so different.

The Four Ways to Scare Buffalo

            A long time ago, Coyote’s wife yelled at him because there was no meat in their home.  She told him four times each morning, four times after each meal, and four times whenever he tried to go to sleep.  She kept doing this until Coyote finally agreed to go on a hunt.  He wanted it to be the greatest hunt ever so his wife would never again ask him to go out.  So he went to Wolf to learn how to hunt.

            Wolf is the greatest hunter in the whole world and he hates Coyote for being so lazy and stealing food.  When Coyote approached him, Wolf growled a warning.  “Stay away from me,” he said.  “If you do not, I will bite you and turn you the color of blood.  Then everyone will be able to see you coming and run from you.”

            “Please,” Coyote crooned.  “I want to learn to hunt so I can catch my own food.  I want to go on the greatest hunt ever.”  Wolf did not believe him, so he told Coyote of the rarest prey he could think of: buffalo.

            “There is an animal,” Wolf said, “rarer than all the others.  It is called the buffalo, and there are only four of them.”

            “How do I find them?” Coyote asked, hopping up and down with excitement.  Wolf was certain Coyote would get himself he killed if he tried to find the buffalo, was happy to tell him.

            “One hides in a cave at the bottom of the river.  He spends all day drawing pictures of fire on the wall to keep warm.  You can only kill him by biting his nose.  The second one lives in a thunder cloud and runs in circles, his hooves hitting the cloud and making the thunder.  He can only be killed by clawing at his throat.  Another one sleeps high up on a salt lick.  It is so high and so salty that it burned Snake’s feet off when he tried to climb it.  The buffalo rests at the top, licking salt all day.  You can only kill him by pulling his tail.”  Wolf took a deep breath.  “The last one is the mother of Horse, and Horse protects her all the time.  The only way to kill that one is to trick Horse to leave and then gnaw on her stomach.”

            “I can do that,” Coyote boasted before setting off to kill the buffalo.  Coyote spent the next month swimming.  He searched the bottom of every river looking for a cave.  When he found it he swam inside and looked for Buffalo.  The pictures of fire on the wall dried his fur.  The pictures delighted Coyote, so he picked up a piece of flint to draw his own.  Coyote focused and very carefully drew a flame on the wall.  He was looking at the drawing so hard he did not notice that he was actually drawing on the buffalo’s flank!  The buffalo turned around and was frightened to see someone in his home, so he ran away before Coyote could bite him on the nose.  The buffalo ran to the plains so it could be safe.  The flame Coyote drew on its side set the grass on fire.  Now that fire isn’t trapped underwater, it can spread wherever it wants.

            Coyote tried not to lose hope, so he climbed a tree and jumped onto the thundercloud to get the second buffalo.  The buffalo was so busy stomping and making thunder that it did not hear Coyote sneak up behind it.  The buffalo looked so delicious that Coyote started to drool.  A drop of drool fell from his tongue and hit the cloud, making the loudest thunder ever.  The huge sound scared the buffalo, who quickly jumped down and joined the first buffalo on the plains.  Coyote stomped around, mad at himself for failing again.  His stomps were full of anger, so now thunder always sounds angry.

            Coyote still did not give up.  He jumped from the cloud to the salt lick.  That way he did not have to climb it and burn his feet.  The buffalo saw this and became terrified that the sky was falling.  He rolled down the salt lick and joined the others on the plains.  Coyote bawled at this, his tears melting the salt beneath him.  After many tears, he was back on the ground.  The salty water became the ocean.

Coyote was very lazy, but he could be tricky.  So when he found Horse protecting his mother buffalo, he pretended to be weak of thirst.  He lied on the ground and whined like a diseased wind. 

            “Oh I am so weak,” he cried out.

“Can I help you?” horse asked out of concern.

            “Oh my son is so kind,” the buffalo praised.

“Yes!” Coyote said. “I am very thirsty.  Will you please get me some water from over there?” Coyote pointed at the ocean he had made. “You can have some if you help me.”

            “My mother has taught me to always help the weak,” Horse said.  He ran over to the ocean with a jar on his back so he could collect some water.  Horse took a big gulp so he would have the energy to run back.  The water was so salty that it made him thirstier than before.  Horse had to keep drinking.  He drank, and drank, and drank until he could not hold anymore.  Horse fell down dead.  When Coyote saw that his plan worked, he jumped up and tried to kill the last buffalo.  The buffalo was scared because her son was no longer there to protect her, so she ran to the plains and joined the others.  Coyote cried a new river and gave up on his hunt.  His wife would just have to yell at him every day.

            Now that all the buffalo are together, they have learned how to make more buffalo.  They aren’t rare anymore, and live on the plains in huge groups.  Since none of the wolves can tell which weak spot each buffalo has, they have to bite them all over in order to kill them.

Rabbit and his French Gun

            When guns came to their home, they caused the animals trouble.  Coyote thought he had it the worst out of everyone.  Whenever he stole a kill and took a big bite, there would always be a little metal ball in it that hurt his teeth.  Every piece of meat he found tasted like metal.

            “I need to get one of these guns,” Coyote reasoned.  “That way I can kill the people that are making my meat taste bad.”  So he set off to find a gun.  Coyote asked every animal if they knew how to get a gun.  Most of them ran away every time they heard the word ‘gun’. 

            Eventually, Coyote noticed that rabbit had a gun of his own.  He was using it to shoot apples off the tree so he could eat them.  The trees got so tired of this that they started dropping apples themselves so they wouldn’t have to hear the loud noises.

            “Rabbit, my friend,” Coyote said.  “Where can I get a gun like yours?”  Rabbit did not think they were friends, since Coyote always chased Rabbit and tried to eat his children, so he decided to play a trick on Coyote. 

            “Well you have to get them from the French people,” rabbit said.  The French trappers have the greatest guns.  Once you get one from them you will be able to kill anything you want.  You can kill a whole herd of buffalo with one bullet.  You can shoot a hole in the sun and get some shade.  You can even shoot someone and there whole family will die at the same time.”

            “Thank you rabbit, I will go get a French gun.”  So Coyote went to the spot where he knew French trappers tried to catch beavers.  He waited there until one of them showed up.  Then he offered to trade four piles of buffalo hump meat for the trapper’s gun.  The trapper agreed and handed over the weapon and four bullets.

            “I only have four bullets,” Coyote said.  “I should use them wisely.”  So Coyote picked up the gun and started choosing what to shoot.  Little did he know, French guns were the worst guns in the world.  Coyote’s first target was the sun.  He was going to shoot a hole in it so he could lie in the shade.  He aimed up and fired.  The bullet didn’t go very high before it fell back down.  Disappointed, Coyote thought he hadn’t aimed right.  Next he wanted to shoot some fish out of the river.  Coyote aimed very carefully this time and fired into the water.  The bullet bounced off the river’s surface.  All of the fish laughed, so now Coyote leaves the fishing to the bears.  Next he tried to shoot a buffalo so he could get some more hump meat, but the bullet got scared halfway there and turned around.

            Very angry, Coyote decided to use his last bullet on Rabbit.  He snuck up behind Rabbit and got very close so the bullet could not miss.  He remembered that Rabbit said the gun could kill a whole family, so he snickered at the idea of killing all the rabbits. 

            He pulled the trigger.  This time, the bullet worked.  Rabbit died.  Unfortunately, Coyote did not know that Rabbit had married his sister while he was gone.  This made them brothers, so Coyote died too.  Now the other animals stay away from guns even more, because they kill so many.