This is an experiment. These Ugandan orphans of Masaka have apparently primarily recycled English colonial stories. This is like a version of Tar Baby. Apparently stories of characters getting stuck to tar or pitch or glue have been told world wide, Even in South and Central America.
Anyone willing to contribute to this project please contact me at campoponies@yahoo.com. (Since I will not be able to afford to publish these stories on my own, every little bit helps!)

HOW HARE GOT CAUGHT STEALING

A long time ago, there was an animal named Hare. He was very thoughtless and lazy. Instead of offering to help out his friends, he chattered to them while they were working. And rather than tending his own plot of land, he sneaked into other people?s gardens and stole their vegetables. Carrots were his favorite!

Hare even pretended to be sick sometimes, so that the other, harder working animals would offer him food. Slow but responsible Tortoise had worked very diligently to plant large crops of millet and maize that season. So when he discovered that someone had been stealing carrots and radishes from his well tended vegetable garden, he got very angry.

Because Tortoise was so very smart and hard working, he thought up a sure plan for catching the self-serving thief once and for all. Since Tortoise suspected Hare, he went home and dressed a scarecrow up with lovely clothes and but a beautiful doll?s head on it. After standing it in the garden, he fixed a bundle of fresh carrots to its chest, and then painted a very sticky layer of gum in strategic places.

Thinking the scarecrow was a lovely girl, hare pretended to have an injured leg and asked her if she would give him some of her carrots. When the wind blew and her head tilted, hare thought she had nodded, so he reached up to thank her by shaking her hand, but she didn?t let go.
?Let go you silly girl,? he said. But when the scarecrow didn?t let go, Hare slapped her with his other hand, which also got stuck in a patch of gum, and then he kicked her.

When Tortoise arrived the next morning accompanied by other animals, they were very surprised. ?I thought for sure it was Monkey,? said Shoebill.?
?Me?? said Monkey. ?Why would I steal from your gardens? I eat fruits and berries up in the treetops!?

Some said that Hare should be put to death for taking advantage of his friends, but in the end it was decided that Hare should be brought before King Lion. Although King Lion could look very fierce he was actually very just and ordered that Hare only get forty strokes with a lash. King Lion also ordered Hare to grow enough food in his garden to pay his friends back the food he had stolen. Hare worked so hard he even produced more than enough to sell at market. And because he had no need to stay awake at night stealing, he lived as a rich and happy farmer happily ever after!