Once there was a young hippo named Rudy. He was a happy little hippo for he had the most loving family in the whole world. They swam together, laughed together and supported each other in their own sweet hippo ways.
One day there was a huge storm. Rudy and his family tried to go about their day as usual, but the storm just got worse and worse. They made their way across the river until they reached blue skies. None of them realized how far they had gone until they looked at the local hippos. "Lumberjack hippos" would be a good term for them for they were the biggest, bulkiest hippos in all the land.
"Dad, have you ever seen anything like them??" Rudy asked, his eyes as big as sand dollars.
"No, Rudy, I most certainly have not," his dad replied, lost in amazement.
These new hippos were at least three times the size of Rudy and his family. They all watched as these monstrous hippos swam back and forth across the width of the river. It looked as if giant elephants had made the rifts in the water; certainly not hippos. They were all perplexed about what to do next. Should they approach them or figure out a way to go around them?
Rudy's grandfather, Buster, was never one to back down from a challenge. He swam slowly up to the herd with only his ears, eyes, and nose sticking up out of the water. When he got within ten feet of them he stopped and grunted a few times to alert them of his presence. He also twitched his ears three times, which everyone knows is the hippo sign of peace.
Suddenly a deep bellow came rumbling across the river and before Buster knew what was happening he was being hurled backwards at a very high velocity. "What in the world??" he cried out as the powerful wave planted him right at the exact spot he started from. "Did you guys see that?!" Buster yelled, still not knowing what hit him.
"See what, grandpa?" Rudy asked as the others wondered if maybe the old hippo had finally lost all his marbles. Buster looked at each other blank faces and for a second wondered if he had, in fact, gone off the deep end.
"I swear someone or something shoved me back down the river. None of you saw anything?" Wild-eyed, Buster circled his family, as if the one with the information he was looking for would suddenly show it somehow.
"Grandpa, are you okay?" Rudy asked timidly, not wanting to provoke him.
"Yeah, Dad, what's gotten into you? We've all been swimming in the river together like we normally do. What's this about being shoved?" Rudy's mom asked bemusedly, but she was actually very frightened by the whole thing. "Are you sure you're feeling alright?"
Buster finally took a look around, beyond where his family was swimming. Gasping, he whirled around and around, not believing his eyes! "But, but, this is impossible! We left our home several hours ago to get away from the storm! And then we ran into those giant hippos, which was when I got shoved back down the river!!" he finished, now out of breath and on the verge of passing out.
"Storm?" "Giant hippos?" "Shoved?" his family was now thoroughly worried about him. They circled around him and gently nudged him to the shallow, muddy side of the river.
"There, there now, Dad, you rest now. I'm sure you'll forget all about this nonsense by morning," his daughter cooed, nuzzling her big snout against his.
Buster slept fitfully. The night was spent braving storms, tracking down huge hippos and locating the underwater beast who hurls hippos when they least expect it.
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