Once upon a time, there lived in Spain a bull named Ferdinand. While his brothers liked to charge around the field, butt their heads together, and to generally act ferocious, Ferdinand liked nothing better than to sit under the cork tree and smell the flowers. He was, you see, a placid and a gentle bull whose only desire in life was to be let alone. And his life would have proceeded very nicely had he not one day placed his considerable rump on a bumblebee on the very same day that five men arrived from Madrid searching for a new star for the corrida.

Translation of: The story of Ferdinand.