the help of his best friend Morton the mouse, Horton decides to place the speck atop Mt. Nool, the safest place in the jungle. The head of the jungle, the Sour Kangaroo, who refuses to believe that the Whos exist, demands numerous times that Horton give up the speck for overshadowing her authority, but Horton refuses. Also taking force toward Horton are the Wickersham Brothers, a group of monkeys who like to cause havoc around the jungle. Eventually, the Kangaroo enlists a sinister but idiotic vulture named Vlad Vladikoff to get rid of the speck by force. He initially only agrees to do it in exchange for the Kangaroo's son Rudy, but when she threatens to hire the Wickersham Brothers to do it as she will probably change her mind, he eventually decides to do it for free. Vlad does many attempts to steal the flower, but Horton outruns him. In a last attempt to steal it, Vlad manages to steal the flower away from Horton and drops it into a massive field of identical pink flowers causing a large tremor in Whoville. After unsuccessfully picking 2,999,999 flowers, Horton eventually recovers the flower (exactly the 3,000,000th flower), also revealing himself to the rest of Whoville. The Kangaroo eventually finds out that Horton still has the speck, fires Vlad, and rallies the jungle community into arresting Horton, preying on their fears that their own children will become chaotic delinquents under his influence. Upon cornering him, the Kangaroo offers Horton a final chance to renounce Whoville's existence. Horton refuses, and despite the heartfelt speech that he gives, the Kangaroo orders the animals to rope and cage him, and to have the speck and Whoville destroyed by dropping it in a pot of beezlenut oil. The Mayor enlists all of his people to make noise so that all the animals will find out they're really there, assisted by JoJo's "Symphonophone", an invention that creates a huge musical contribution and reveals that JoJo's "true" passion is music but still fails to penetrate the surface of the speck. The Kangaroo snatches the flower from the captured Horton and prepares to drop it into the pot. Meanwhile, JoJo grabs the horn that was used to project Horton's voice, runs up the highest tower, and screams his first word which is "No", breaking through the sound barrier just seconds before the speck hits the oil. Rudy grabs