“Oh, look!” cried Chunky. “What are the birds going to do?” he asked his mother. “Are they going to bite me?”
“No; don’t be afraid, silly little hippo boy!” she answered, with a loud laugh. “The birds just came to get the snails and water bugs that are sticking to your back. The river is full of snails, and when you go in to swim they stick to you. The birds like to pick them off and eat them, and that’s what they’re doing now.”
And that is just what the birds were doing. Out of the jungle they had flown, and they circled around and lighted, one after another, on the broad, flat backs of Chunky and the other hippo children. The skin of a hippo is very thick—two inches in some places—but there are tender spots where mosquitoes, or bad bugs like that, can bite. But on the backs of the hippos nothing could bite through, and even when the birds picked off the water spiders and snails with their sharp bills the hippos did not feel it.
“Isn’t it funny to have birds on your back?” said Chunky to Big Foot.
“Oh, it has happened to me before,” said the larger hippo boy. “Of course you’re young yet—you’ve got lots to learn.”
“Well, I’m glad the birds can get something to eat off me,” laughed Chunky in his jolly way. He laughed, in his own fashion, more than any of the other hippos, and seemed quite happy, so much so that often, when he was spoken of, he was called “Chunky, the happy hippo.”
Here and there fluttered the birds on the backs of the hippos, picking off the water insects, which might get under the folds of the skin of Chunky and his mates and pain them. So the birds not only got a meal for themselves but they helped the animals.
After a while all the bugs and snails were picked off and the birds flew back into the jungle. Chunky watched them as they sailed above the tree tops, and then he, too, walked slowly into the deep woods.
“Where are you going?” asked his sister.
“Oh, off into the jungle to have a sleep,” he answered. “Want to come along?”