The Hippo Who Wanted to Dance Ballet

The Dreamer in the Mud

In the center of the Muddy Marsh lived Barnaby, a three-ton hippopotamus with a heart as delicate as a strawberry blossom.

While the other hippos spent their days wallowing in smelly gray mud and practicing their biggest grumpy yawns, Barnaby spent his days perched behind a reed bush, watching the pink flamingos practice their sunset ballet.

"Look at their graceful arches!" Barnaby whispered, swooning. "Look at their weightless twirls! Oh, I was born to be a prima ballerina!"

His best friend, a little tickbird named Pip, shook his tiny feathered head.

"Barnaby, buddy," Pip chirped from Barnaby's left ear. "You weigh as much as two pickup trucks. Flamingos have legs like soda straws. You have legs like tree stumps."

"Stumps with rhythm!" Barnaby insisted, puffing his chest.

The Pink Tutu Disaster

The next morning, Barnaby decided he needed the proper uniform. He gathered fifty yards of wild pink pondweed and tied it around his voluminous waist like a gigantic, soggy tutu.

He found two flat halves of a hollow coconut and strapped them to his back toes for pointe shoes.

"Now, behold!" Barnaby announced to the startled turtles sunning on a log. "Barnaby’s Grand Pirouette!"

He lifted his left rear foot into the air. He tried to balance on his right coconut pointe shoe.

He wobbled to the left. Whoa! He tilted to the right. Whoaaa!

Then came the grand spin!

Barnaby spun once: swish! He spun twice: SWOOSH!

On the third spin, the coconut shoe slipped on a slick banana peel. Barnaby went flying across the marsh like a runaway gray boulder.

KER-THUUUUUUMP! KAAA-SPLAAAAAASH!

A tidal wave of warm muddy water rose thirty feet into the air. When the spray settled, the pink flamingos were covered in gooey brown mud. Three frogs were wearing waterlily hats, and Pip the tickbird was stuck beak-first inside a hollow gourd.

Finding the Hippo Beat

Barnaby sat up in the muddy crater, his pondweed tutu drooping sadly over his eyes.

"I am a failure," Barnaby sniffled, two giant tears splashing into the puddles. "I am too big, too gray, and too noisy for dancing."

The pink flamingos looked at their muddy feathers. Then, the lead flamingo, Madame Flamboyante, shook herself off and chuckled.

"My dear Barnaby," she said, flapping her wings. "Ballet is wonderful for birds with hollow bones. But when you spun, do you know what you did? You made the whole earth vibrate with a magnificent, deep bass rhythm!"

Thump-thump! Thump-thump!

Madame Flamboyante tapped her beak against Barnaby’s thick hide.

Pip hopped out of the gourd and tapped a pebble: tick-tick-tap!

Barnaby tapped his broad front foot: BOOM! He swished his short tail: SWISH-SLAP!

The Swamp-Hop Sensation

Barnaby stood up. He forgot all about the soda-straw flamingo steps. He leaned into his big, wonderful hippo body.

He stamped his left foot: STOMP! He wiggled his giant hips: SHAKE! He splashed water with his snout: SPLISH!

It wasn't delicate ballet. It was the Swamp-Hop Boogie!

The rhythm was so infectious that the monkeys started clapping from the mangrove branches. The turtles tapped their shells. Even Madame Flamboyante and her flamingo flock joined in, flapping their muddy wings in sync with Barnaby’s joyful, thunderous bass beat!

From that evening forward, the Muddy Marsh became the most famous dance club in the entire savanna. And right in the center, leading the crowd with the biggest smile and the greatest splash, was Barnaby the dancing hippo—the happiest star who stopped wishing to be a flamingo and discovered the magnificence of being himself!