# The Rhinoceros — Just So Stories character guide

> The Rhinoceros in Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Strorks, the Rhinoceros Strorks

**First appearance:** 0002-how-the-rhinoceros-got-his-skin

## Snapshot

A horn-nosed thief with few manners who steals a Parsee's cake and pays for it with a skin full of tickly crumbs and a permanent bad temper.

## Who they are

In the days when the Rhinoceros's skin fit him tight as a Noah's Ark toy, he charged down from the Uninhabited Interior, upset the Parsee's oil-stove, and spiked the freshly baked cake on his horn. The Parsee, who never ate anything but cake, waited five weeks and then filled the discarded skin with stale crumbs and burned currants while the Rhinoceros bathed. The itching that follows explains both the Rhinoceros's folds and his famously foul disposition, in a tale where petty theft meets perfectly patient revenge.

## In the story

### [How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/chapters/how-the-rhinoceros-got-his-skin)

The Rhinoceros (Strorks) steals the Parsee's cake, later removes his skin to bathe, and after putting it back on filled with crumbs, scratches himself into permanent wrinkles.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters/the_rhinoceros
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/just_so_stories_se/characters