How Giraffes Came to Be

I wrote this story for a school assignment. It had by one of those stories that explained why something happened. It aslo had to be written in the style that most of them are written, which to me always sounds like a children's story. This is definitely not my style of writting, so I wanted to see what you guys thought of it.

There once was herd of yellow horses. These horses were rather large, and had a ravenous appetite. All day long they would do nothing but graze in the fields of the great African grasslands. The elephants, zebras, and rhinoceroses didn’t mind, because there was plenty of food for everyone.

One day a group of these horses decided to have a contest.

“Let’s see who can eat for the longest without becoming full.” One of them said.

After a judge was appointed, the contest began. Without stopping the horses ate, and ate, and ate. Not a single one of them became too full to eat. The judge started to get bored, but waited patiently. The sun started to go down, but still, the horses were pulling grass from the soil. It lasted for hours, days, weeks, months.

Finally, after all this time, the horses became full. They looked up, and with horror they realised that all the grass was gone.

“Oh no,” came the cries, “we’ve eaten everything!”

“How will the rest of the herd get food?” One of them asked.

“What about the leaves on the trees?” Another suggested.

“There’s no way we can reach them, the trees are so tall!”

It was the only way to get food, so they decided to give it a try. Fallen branches were brought to stack against trees, but every time someone tried to climb it, the stack would topple, and the horse would fall leaving him with brown patches of dirt on his yellow fur that wouldn’t wash away. Many other methods were tried, but all failed.

Then an idea was developed. The group huddled together, discussing how this new plan could be accomplished. Soon, they were able to agree on a way. The whole heard was gathered to listen, because they had a part in it too.

The next day the horses found places where their heads could get stuck, like between the low branches of trees. When completely secured, the horses would slowly walk backwards, stretching their necks a little bit each time. After a few days of doing this, the horses got what they wanted—extremely long necks to reach the leaves on the trees.

The other animals laughed when they saw this, and nicknamed them Giraffe, meaning “tallest living quadruped,” or four legged animal. The name eventually stuck and they were known as this ever since.