Every Sunday in the Colombo Zoo in Sri Lanka, there takes place a show in which trained elephants perform wonders that are not easy for most humans, or animals for that matter, in front of an audience of thousands of admirers. They balance themselves on balls, climb up on each other and dance to different tunes.

This is the story of Chiko — one such talented elephant — his friends Mambo, Toni, Ginger and the rest of his zoo family, and their wild experience in the lush green outskirts of the city.

It so happens that their trainer, Mr Paul Sene — a big burly elephant of a man himself with a kind heart whose only interest was in his performing bunch — received a handsome raise and bonus from the zoo keepers in appreciation of his dedicated work and its crowd-luring results.

Delighted with the extra money, Mr Sene took the opportunity to take some time off from his work and visit the countryside. He decided to take his elephants with him as a chance for them to visit a world outside the boundaries of the zoo. So he packed his bags, borrowed a few caravans and set off with his elephants to Candy, a beautiful place in the country where tourists and travellers often stopped by, or set up camp.

It so happened that in that same field that day, a film crew had set up camp while shooting a new production of Tarzan. Unaware of their presence, the trainer set his elephants loose so they could enjoy the floral landscape.

Chiko, the most inquisitive of the lot, was the first to notice a spire of smoke in the sky near a brook. He and Toni set off at once to investigate and were mildly surprised to find a series of canvases and human belongings left out in the open.

“Gee, I bet it's deserted. Let's poke around...” Chiko said mischievously. And so they peeked into first one, then the next tent until they stumbled upon the prop storage! And then what fun they had!

“Look at all this stuff!” Toni said, poking his big head under the tent so that it was lifted off the ground and blew off with the wind. All manner of things were stored in groups and bundles all over the place.

Chiko put his trunk in some suspicious looking cans to sniff the content and was surprised when out came a liquid in colour. Toni then tried another can and found that this one turned his trunk blue. They wiggled them about in astonishment and spilt paint all over the place.

In the meantime, some other elephants had got wind of their interesting find and came to snoop around too. Mambo, the ball rider, was surprised to find an object that moved when he climbed on it ... a skateboard! He climbed on and was surprised and bewildered at its motion as it slowly rolled down the slope of the hill.

There was slight panic for a moment as Toni got something prickly stuck in his trunk, but he blew it out and it was a small paper plane with a paper doll on top. It zoomed over the field in a large circumference, catching the eye and admiration of every elephant looking its way.

Ginger and some others found a lot of pots, pans, drums and boxes, and created such a racket that even their trainer far away cocked his ear in astonishment. But he figured that it was probably some noisy young tourists. Little did he imagine that it could be his own noisy young elephants!

As the crates and boxes spilled about, some balloons were let loose that added to the scene of utter confusion. Polo, the baby elephant, climbed onto its mother's back like it had learnt and grabbed one of the pretty balloons before it could fly away.

Chiko found some arms and artillery in one of the crates and first scattered them about thinking it was meaningless junk. Then as he was examining an automatic with his trunk it went off and hit the dynamite barrels. Then there was truly a pandemonium as a huge explosion broke through the peaceful evening. All the elephants quickly broke into a rampage and their trainer came running to calm them down.... And, of course, so did the film crew come running... to find that their equipment was ruined.

The producer was in a terrible rage. The short red faced man stamped about in a fit of anger and yelled abuses at everyone. “Why was nobody on guard? Film props don't grow on trees! And who, just who, let those damn ELEPHANTS loose in the open?!!!”

Mr Sene mumbled hurried apologies but the director of the film came to the rescue. “Such talented animals! Why, I have visited the Colombo Zoo once or twice myself,” he said enthusiastically to Mr Sene. “Are these the same elephants? Look at that baby one still holding the balloon! Mr Producer, please shut up. You can replace those props with a few hundred dollars, I am sure, but these elephants are priceless! Mr Sene, will you give me permission to use them in my film? They'll be a riot! And they'll get their share of the profits too!”

So it all turned out well in the end. Mr Sene gave a long, stern lecture to his elephants about the seriousness of their mischief, but he gladly let the producer cast them in the picture. So don't forget to watch the next version of Tarzan that should be coming soon, because then you will get a chance to see these famous elephants first hand without the expense of travelling to Sri Lanka for the Dancing Elephant Show!