The Thank-You Parade

The sun peeks over the zoo, warm and yellow, but down in the mud Hugo the hippo wakes up on the grumpy side of his pool. Nobody ever does anything for ME, he snorts — and stomps off, ignoring wise Grandma Owl's gentle question: are you quite sure about that, little one? He stomps past the keeper's hay basket, past the songbird's branch, past the cool blue river, all the way to a lonely corner where he flops down feeling small and unnoticed. Then a little songbird flutters down and sings the very tune that wakes him every morning — and all at once Hugo sees it: the wake-up song, the fresh hay, the cool river. Help had been all around him the whole time, and he had simply forgotten to say thank you. So up he jumps with the biggest idea a hippo ever had — a loud, proud, stomping THANK-YOU parade, marching to every helper in the zoo. Stomp and cheer, loud and true — everybody, thank you, thank you! By nightfall the whole zoo is marching behind him, and Hugo learns that saying thank you feels even warmer than the morning sun.