WHY THE HONEY BADGER LOVES HONEY - A South African Story

Book excerpt: ISSN: 2397-9607 Issue 220 In this 220th issue of the Baba Indaba’s Children's Stories series, Baba Indaba narrates the South African tale of why the African Honey Badger, or the Ratel (Raa-til), loves honey. The life of the honey badger is not an easy one. There is a lot of competition in the South African bush for scarce food resources, especially wild honey. So when a Honey Badger finds a fresh beehive, they are apt to raid it for all its worth. To this end Father Ratel has hidden his family’s stash of honey in a sack under his bed. It is brought out on occasion as a special treat for the young honey badgers to sample. But the family’s young son has sniffed out the stash and has been helping himself. His father suspects something is going on as his son has a decided whiff of honey about him all the time. So he asks his son where he is getting the honey from. His son tells him he is getting if from the Sweet Gum tree out there on the Savannah. But his father has never heard of a Sweet Gum tree, especially not one in this area of the veld (bush). He asks his son where this tree is so that he can check it out in the morning – which starts off a chain of events in which young ratel tries to recover the situation with predictable consequences. But is young ratel able to outfox his wily father? Download and read the full story here to find out what the eventual outcome was. 33% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities. INCLUDES LINKS TO DOWNLOAD 8 FREE STORIES Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story. HINT - use Google maps. Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories".