ONE day, when Christopher Warren and Barry-the-Oh and Zbiglet were all talking together, Christopher Warren finished the mouthful he was eating and said carelessly: “I saw a Heffalump today, Zbiglet.”

“What was it doing?” asked Zbiglet.

“Just lumping along,” said Christopher Warren. “I don’t think it saw me.”

“I saw one once,” said Zbiglet. “At least, I think I did,” he said. “Only perhaps it wasn’t.”

“So did I,” said Oh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.

Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Oh and Zbiglet to go home together. At first as they stumped along the Beltway which edged the Sixteen Hundred Acre Swamp, they didn’t say much; but when they came to the Potomac, and had helped each other across the stepping stones, they began to talk in a friendly way about this and that. And then, just as they came to the Foggy Bottom, Oh looked round to see that nobody else was listening, and said in a very solemn voice: “Zbiglet, I have decided to catch a Heffalump.”

Oh nodded his head several times as he said this, and waited for Zbiglet to say “How?” or “Oh, you couldn’t!” or something helpful of that sort, but Zbiglet said nothing. The fact was Zbiglet was wishing that he had thought about it first.

“I shall do it,” said Oh, after waiting a little longer, “by means of a trap. And it must be a Cunning Trap, so you will have to help me, Zbiglet.”

“Oh,” said Zbiglet, feeling quite happy again now, “I will.” And then he said, “How shall we do it?” and Oh said, “That’s just it. How?” And then they sat down together to think it out.

Oh’s first idea was that they should dig a Very Deep Hole, and then the Heffalump would come along and fall into the Hole, and —

“Why?” said Zbiglet.

“Why what?” said Oh.

“Why would he fall in?”

Oh rubbed his nose with his paw, and said that he would talk directly to the Heffalump, distracting it with tricksy questions, and it wouldn’t see the Very Deep Hole until it was half-way down, when it would be too late.

Zbiglet said that this was a very good Trap, but supposing the Heffalump was not so easily distracted as a Bear?

Oh rubbed his nose again, and said that he hadn’t thought of that. They sighed and got up; and when they had taken a few gorse prickles out of themselves they sat down again; and all the time Oh was saying to himself, “If only I could think of something!” For he felt sure that a Very Clever Brain could catch a Heffalump if only he knew the right way to go about it.

“Suppose,” he said to Zbiglet, “you wanted to catch me, how would you do it?”

“Well,” said Zbiglet, “I should make a Trap, and I should put a Jar of Hope in the Trap, and you would smell it, and you would go in after it, and there I should catch you. Now the first thing to think of is, What do Heffalumps like? I should think yellowcake, shouldn’t you? We’ll get a lot of — I say, wake up, Oh!”

Oh, who had gone into a happy dream, woke up with a start, and said that Hope was a much more trappy thing than yellowcake. Zbiglet was about to argue when he remembered that, if they put yellowcake in the Trap, he would have to enrich the yellowcake, but if they put hope, then Oh already had plenty, so he said, “All right, hope then,” just as Oh remembered it too, and was going to say, “All right, yellowcake.” “Hope,” said Zbiglet to himself in a thoughtful way, as if it were now settled. “I’ll dig the hole, while you bring the hope.”

Oh stumped home and went to the larder. He stood on a chair, and took down a very large jar of hope from the top shelf. It had HOPEY written on it, but to make sure, he took off the cover and it looked just like hope. “But you never can tell,” said Oh. “I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen change just this shade of brown.” So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. “Yes,” he said, “it is. No doubt about that. And hope, I should say, right down to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course,” he said, “somebody put change in at the bottom just for a joke.

Perhaps I had better go a little further… just in case Heffalumps don’t like change…

Ah!” And he gave a deep sigh. “I was right. It is hopey, right the way down.”

Having made certain of this, he took the jar and threw it down to Zbiglet at the bottom of his Very Deep Hole. Zbiglet put the jar at the bottom of the Hole, and climbed out, and they went off home together.

“Well, good night, Oh,” said Zbiglet, when they got to the White House. “And we meet at six o’clock tomorrow morning at Foggy Bottom, and see how many Heffalumps we’ve got in our Trap.”

“Six o’clock, Zbiglet. And have you got any string?”

“No. Why do you want string?”

“To lead them home with.”

“Oh!… I think Heffalumps come if you whistle.”

“Some do and some don’t. You never can tell with Heffalumps. Well, good night!”

“Good night!”

And off Zbiglet trotted to his house, OCCUPIERS W, while Oh made his preparations for bed.

Some hours later, Oh woke up suddenly feeling hungry. So he went to the larder, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf, and found — nothing.

“That’s funny,” he murmured to himself. “I know I had a jar of hope there. A full jar, full of hope right up to the top, and it had HOPEY written on it.”  Suddenly, he remembered he had put it into the Cunning Trap to catch the Heffalump.

“Bother!” said Oh. “It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps.” And he got back into bed.

But he couldn’t sleep. He tried Counting Sheep, but that was no good, so he tried counting Heffalumps. And that was worse, because every Heffalump that he counted was finishing off Oh’s hope.  Oh felt as though he was losing his hope! When the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump was licking its jaws, Oh jumped out of bed and ran out of the White House, straight to the Foggy Bottom.

The Sun was still in bed, but there was a lightness in the sky over the Sixteen Hundred Acre Swamp. In the half-light, the Foggy Bottom looked cold and lonely, and the Very Deep Hole seemed deeper than it was, and Oh’s jar of hope was a mysterious shape and no more. But as he got nearer to it his nose told him that it was indeed hopey, and his tongue came out and began to polish up his mouth, ready for it.

“Bother!” said Oh, as he got his nose inside the jar.

“A Heffalump has been eating it!” And then he thought a little and said, “Oh, no, I did. I forgot.”

Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to lick….

By and by Zbiglet woke up. As soon as he woke he said to himself, “Oh!” Then he said bravely, “Yes,” and then, still more bravely, “Yes, I can.” But he didn’t feel very brave, for the word which was really jiggeting about in his brain was “Heffalumps.”

Of course Oh would be with him, and it was much more Friendly with two. But suppose Heffalumps were Very Fierce with Zbiglets and Bears?

Wouldn’t it be better to pretend that he had a headache, and couldn’t go up to the Foggy Bottom this morning? But then suppose that it was a very fine day, and there was no Heffalump in the trap, here he would be, in bed all the morning, simply wasting his time for nothing. What should he do?

And then he had a Clever Idea. He would go up very quietly to the Foggy Bottom now, peep very cautiously into the Trap, and see if there was a Heffalump there. And if there was, he would go back to bed, and if there wasn’t, he wouldn’t.

So off he went. At first he thought that there wouldn’t be a Heffalump in the Trap, and then he thought that there would, and as he got nearer he was sure that there would, because he could hear it heffalumping about it like anything.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” said Zbiglet to himself.

And he wanted to run away. But somehow, having got so near, he felt that he must just see what a Heffalump was like. So he crept to the side of the Trap and looked in.

And all the time Barry-the-Oh had been trying to get the hopey-jar off his head. The more he shook it, the more tightly it stuck. “Bother!” he said, inside the jar, and “Help!” and, mostly, “Ow!” And he tried bumping it against things, but as he couldn’t see what he was bumping it against, it didn’t help him; and he tried to climb out of the Trap, but as he could see nothing but jar, and not much of that, he couldn’t find his way. So at last he lifted up his head, jar and all, and made a loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair

…and it was at that moment that Zbiglet looked down.

“Help, help!” cried Zbiglet, “a Heffalump, a Horrible Heffalump!” and he scampered off as hard as he could, still crying out, “Help, help, a Herrible Hoffalump! Hoff, Hoff, a Hellible Horralump! Holl, Holl, a Hasselhoff Hellerump!” And he didn’t stop crying and scampering until he got to Christopher Warren’s house.

“Whatever’s the matter, Zbiglet?” said Christopher Warren, who was just getting up.

“Heff,” said Zbiglet, breathing so hard that he could hardly speak, “a Heff — a Heff — a Heffalump.”

“Where?”

“Up there,” said Zbiglet, waving his paw.

“What did it look like?”

“Like — like — It had the biggest head you ever saw, Christopher Warren. A great enormous thing, like — like nothing. A huge big — well, like a — I don’t know — like an enormous big nothing. Like a jar.”

“Well,” said Christopher Warren, putting on his stripey pants and Italian loafers, “I shall go and appease it. Come on.”

Zbiglet wasn’t afraid if he had Christopher Warren with him, so off they went….

“I can hear it, can’t you?” said Zbiglet anxiously, as they got near.

“I can hear something,” said Christopher Warren.

It was Oh bumping his head against a tree-root he had found.

“There!” said Zbiglet. “Isn’t it awful?” And he held on tight to Christopher Warren’s hand.

Suddenly Christopher Warren began to laugh . . . and he laughed . . and he laughed . . . and he laughed. And while he was still laughing — Crash went the Heffalump’s head against the tree-root, Smash went the jar, and out came Oh’s head again….

Then Zbiglet saw what a Foolish Zbiglet he had been, and he was so ashamed of himself that he ran straight off home, drafted a policy paper and went to bed with a headache. But Christopher Warren and Oh went home to breakfast together.

“Oh, Bear!” said Christopher Warren. “How I do love you!”

“So do I,” said Oh.