Читать книгу Chunky, the Happy Hippo: His Many Adventures онлайн

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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.