The Baobabs

As each day passed I would learn, in our conversations, something about the little prince's planet. On the third day I heard about the catastrophe of the baobabs.

The little prince asked me suddenly — as if troubled by a serious doubt: "It is true, isn't it, that sheep eat little bushes?"

"Yes, that is true."

"Ah! I am glad! Then it follows that they also eat baobabs?"

I pointed out to the little prince that baobabs were not little bushes, but, on the contrary, trees as big as castles; and that even a whole herd of elephants could not eat up a single baobab.

The idea of the herd of elephants made the little prince laugh. "We would have to put them one on top of the other," he said. But he made a wise observation: "Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little."

"That is strictly correct," I said. "But why do you want the sheep to eat the little baobabs?"

He replied as if it were obvious.

On his planet there were good seeds and bad seeds. The bad seeds slept inside the earth until one day they decided to wake up. The bad plants had to be pulled out the very first moment they could be recognised. And the seeds of the baobab were very bad indeed. If a baobab was left too long, it could never be got rid of. It would spread over the whole planet. It would bore through it with its roots. And if the planet was too small, the baobabs would split it into pieces.

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince told me later. "When you have finished your morning routine, you must carefully attend to the routine of your planet. You must pull up the baobabs as soon as you can tell them apart from the rose bushes — they look very similar when young. It is very tedious work, but very easy."

One day he urged me: "You ought to make a beautiful drawing, so that the children where you live can see exactly how all this is. If they were to travel some day, it would be very useful to them. Sometimes there is no harm in putting off a piece of work until another day. But when it is a matter of baobabs, that always means a catastrophe."