“Yes, I guess it does, little chap,” said Mr. Hippo. “Come along with me and I’ll get your mother to put a grass poultice on it. Or you can hold it in the soft, cool mud on the edge of the river. That will cure it.”
Of course I don’t mean to say that sick animals really doctor themselves, but if you ever see your cat or dog eat grass, you may be sure it is doing it because it feels ill, so, in a way, it is taking medicine.
And if you have ever watched a dog when it has been stung by a bee, you may have seen him go to some place where there is cool, wet mud that he can lie down in, and so get some plastered on the stung place, to make it pain less. So he takes this kind of medicine.
In the jungle wild animals, when they are shot, or hurt by one of their own kind, or by another kind, get away if they can, where they can drink water and let some of it wash up on their wound. Water, mud and some kinds of grass and leaves are jungle medicines for the animal folk.
And that is what Mr. Hippo meant. He did not mean that Mrs. Hippo would make a real grass poultice for Chunky’s sore nose, only that she might chew up some grass until it was soft and mushy and then her little boy hippo could lay his nose against it to make the bites of the crocodile feel better.
“Where have you been?” asked Mrs. Hippo, as she saw Mr. Hippo and Chunky coming home.
“Oh, the boy got into trouble—one of those crocodiles,” said the father hippo, in his own kind of talk. “We’ll have to move away from here, I guess, if many more crocodiles come to this river.”
Jungle animals do move from place to place; hippos, monkeys and elephants especially. They stay around one spot until they have eaten all the good food there, or until all the water is gone, and then they move on to a new home. Sometimes they move from one place to another because of danger, such as crocodiles or snakes might make.
“Oh, Chunky, your nose is bleeding!” said Mrs. Hippo.