Order?
Why people put these
twelve animals in that order, as rat the first, buffero the second,
and swine at the last?
There is an interesting
story in it. It is said that long time ago, the king want to choose
twelve animals as the soldiers in the Palace. All animals wanted
to be selected by the king and they went to sign their names.
The cat had something else to do and could not go by himself.
He asked the rat to sign the name for him. The rat was afraid
that the cat could be selected and intentionally forgot the cat's
request. Therefore, the cat could not sign his name and also could
not be selected. From then on, the cat and the rat became enemies.
The elephant had a good chance to be the soldier, but the rat
entered the trunk and thus drive him away.
In the remaining
twelve animals, they all elected the buffero as the number one.
However,
the
rat jumped on the back of the buffero and said that he could control
the buffero. Then, the rat ranked the first. The dragon and the
tiger deemed it unfair. They were appointed respectively as the
King of the sea and the King of the mountain, and ranked behind
the rat and the buffero. The rabbit could not be convinced and
it wanted to race with the dragon. The rabbit won and therefore
was ranked before the dragon. The dog was angry about it and bit
the rabbit, and thus was published to rank behind. Other animals
also had a great competence for ranking their order. At last,
it formed the order that we are all familiar with now.