Eat or Be Eaten

Timon and Pumbaa"Eat or Be Eaten"

Eat or be Eaten is a comic story starring Timon and Pumbaa.

Synopsis

At the start of the comic, the two are romping through the jungle, singing and laughing. Suddenly, Timon spots a cliff cutting through their path. Too late, Pumbaa tries to stop, but ends up falling over the side of the steep ledge with Timon in tow.

The two fall through the air and crash into a body of water far below. Timon immediately races for the surface and begins to make his way toward shore, but upon reaching the sand, he finds that Pumbaa is nowhere in sight. He calls out for his friend, but Pumbaa is unable to answer, as he is caught in a swirling whirlpool far beneath the lake. Helpless, Timon turns away and begins to grieve for the loss of his best friend.

Meanwhile, the vortex has sucked Pumbaa into an underground lake. As the warthog beings to investigate, he discovers a cavern full of luminescent mushrooms. After giving them a curious sniff, he decides to eat them, for that big fall into the lake had made him hungry. Pumbaa takes a bite of the mushrooms and suddenly feels very different.

Back in the jungle, Timon is still lamenting the loss of Pumbaa. But in the midst of his misery, he hears a strange rustling in the bushes. Turning around, he is delighted to see that Pumbaa has emerged out of the vegetation. But as he goes to greet his old friend, Pumbaa growls and charges Timon. The meerkat is confused, but proceeds to run from his maddened friend. As the chase begins to drag, Timon scurries up a tree and decides to stay there until Pumbaa is back to normal.

But as the meerkat is settling down for a nap, Pumbaa begins to gnaw at the trunk of the tree with his tusks. The fierce shaking causes Timon to lose his footing and he falls out of the tree, just barely managing to catch onto a vine before hitting the ground. Still confused over his friend's strange behavior, Timon decides to call on the help of one of his wiser friends.

The meerkat proceeds to make a smoke signal and help soon arrives. Rafiki reaches the jungle and Timon immediately jumps into his story about Pumbaa. After explaining the whole story to Rafiki, Timon points to Pumbaa, who is angrily tearing at the vegetation not far from their hiding place. After hearing the explanation, Rafiki comes to the conclusion that Pumbaa ate luminous mushrooms. He then proclaims that they must feed him something else. Timon is curious as to what they should feed him and Rafiki replies that they would feed Timon to Pumbaa. At first, Timon misunderstands Rafiki and goes ballistic, but then Rafiki mysteriously comments that they would only feed Pumbaa something that looks like Timon. He then wanders off in search of herbs.

Much later, Pumbaa is feeding on leaves when Timon's insulting voice echoes through the jungle. In a mad fury, Pumbaa takes off in search of the voice. He soon sees Timon's silhouette up ahead and races madly toward it. In seconds, he gobbles the leaf mold right up. When all the healing herbs are down Pumbaa's throat, Timon comes out of the jungle bushes and asks Pumbaa if he's feeling better. For a moment, Pumbaa's madness lingers, but then he suddenly feels normal again. Confused, he asks what happened. Together, Rafiki and Timon explain that their friendship had saved him!

Spoilers end here.

Trivia

• In this comic, Timon has an established relationship with Rafiki, though the two are strangers in the film.

Pages

The following images are six pages of the comic loosely translated into English from their original version.