“Oh, dear!” said Chunky again, in hippo talk. I guess this was about the tenth time he had said it.
Then, all at once, he sort of smiled—that is, he opened his mouth, as if he were laughing, though I don’t suppose that jungle animals really either smile or laugh as you do.
But, at any rate, Chunky, who was usually a jolly, happy little chap, made up his mind there was no use in feeling too bad about what had happened to him.
“I am stuck in the mud—that’s true,” he said to himself; “but it is better than being held fast at the bottom of the river by a crocodile who has you by the nose. This is much better.
“I am out on the land, and I don’t have to hold my breath under water for fear of being drowned. And the mud doesn’t hurt me. In fact it is rather nice and soft,” continued the hippo boy.
So Chunky made the mud go “squee-gee” between his toes, and tried to make himself think he was happy. But he was a little anxious, for he feared he had fallen into a trap.
He had heard his father and mother, as well as the other big hippos, talk about traps set by hunters in the jungle. Some of the hunters were the black or brown people who lived in the big woods, and others were white hunters who came from far-off countries. And the traps they set were of different kinds.
Some were nets, made of strong jungle vines. Others were great pits, or holes, dug in the ground and covered with leaves and grass, so the animals could not see them. Whenever they stepped on the grass scattered over the hole, the animals fell through and could not get out of the pit.
Other traps were made of big stones or of logs, so fixed that they would fall on the animals that walked beneath them, and would hurt the animals very much. The hole-traps were the most common, though Chunky thought a mud trap was very good, for catching hippos.