George the Millipede

George the millipede had a terrible pain in one of his feet. It had been hurting him ever since he had tripped over a broken bottle in the front garden. For days he had slithered around with a peculiar wiggle. The other insects looked the other way when he went by so he wouldn’t see them smiling.

‘The trouble is,’ he complained to anyone who would listen, ‘I can’t tell which foot it is.’ With two hundred and forty feet to choose from it was hardly surprising. When you have toothache it doesn’t always hurt in the right place. George’s foot was the same. One minute he thought it was foot eighty-six on the left and the next it seemed to be foot one hundred and thirty-two on the right. Sometimes it was just behind his head and at others right down the far end.

‘I know,’ said his brother, Lionel. ‘If I kick all your legs really hard, when I kick the sore one it will hurt more than the others and then we’ll know which one it is.’

Millipedes are not very bright. They are even more stupid than sheep, so George thought it seemed like a good idea.

By the time Lionel had kicked a hundred of his legs George was beginning to wonder if it had been such a good idea after all. His eyes were watering and every part of him felt sore. Lionel was so exhausted he could hardly stand and was weaving about the lawn like a drunk worm.

‘We can’t give up now,’ he said and stupid George agreed.

‘Ow, ouch, ow, ouch,’ he cried as Lionel worked his way down his side. And then at last he cried: ‘OWWW!’

‘That’s it,’ cried Lionel. ‘That’s the one.’ He ran off to get a piece of dock leaf, but when he got back he had lost his place and had to kick George another twenty times until he found it again.

‘Ohh, that feels good,’ sighed George as he wriggled his bad foot into the dock leaf and limped home.

‘Why didn’t you just rub all your feet into the leaf?’ said George’s mother, who wasn’t as stupid as her two sons. ‘That would’ve cured it.’

George went bright red and spun round to catch his brother, but Lionel had slipped away across the dandelions.