Happy the hippo was a very large animal that lived beside the river Awash. Hippo’s are vegetarian and eat grass and other plants. The only trouble with Happy was that he also like eating plastic washing up bowls which was not at all good for him and gave him dreadful tummy aches. He was also very inquisitive and if he saw something unusual, he would go and investigate it.
Once we were camping on the banks of the river Awash and Piers was sent to get something from the next campsite. He came back much too quickly, and Granny said where is the towel I asked you to fetch? I could not get there to fetch it said Piers, there is a hippo in the way. Nonsense we said but when we went to have a look it was true.
So, we backed off and went to our own campsite. We thought the hippo had gone away but we were wrong.
Happy was so intrigued by these strange animals that he went back later on in the night and woke Piers and Christopher up by licking their hair.
They gave a great shout and we rushed to their tent and manage to frighten Happy away. We kept watch in turns during the rest of the night ad he did not come back.
We stayed there for two more nights and could see Happy in the river. We never saw him again on land. But our plastic washing up bowls kept disappearing. We found out late that it was Happy who had stolen them and eaten them. He became very ill and sadly died some weeks later. The motto of this story is: don’t eat washing up bowls.