On the hottest afternoon of summer, Moti Elephant rolled a wooden barrel beneath the banyan tree.
“Mango ice cream!” he announced.
Every animal received one scoop in a leaf bowl. Chi Chi swallowed hers so quickly that Mama was still lifting her spoon.
“Another?” Chi Chi asked.
“Not now,” Papa said. “That is plenty for a little bird.”
While the grown-ups discussed a cloud shaped like a potato, Chi Chi noticed the barrel’s lid had been left crooked. A golden drip slid down the side.
She crept behind it.
One stolen lick became a beakful. A beakful became two scoops. Soon Chi Chi was standing inside the barrel with only her tail showing.
“Magnificent,” she murmured.
Then a freezing pain shot across her forehead.
Chi Chi sprang out, flapped backwards and landed in Moti’s empty cone basket. Orange ice cream covered her from beak to claws.
Mama lifted the lid. “Has anyone seen Chi Chi?”
The orange bird held very still.
Papa looked at the sticky footprints leading around the barrel. “Curious. They are exactly Chi Chi-sized.”
Moti leaned close. “And this cone basket is hiccupping.”
“HIC!” said Chi Chi.
She climbed out and admitted what she had done. Before anyone answered, her stomach made a noise like a frog rolling downstairs.
Moti gave her warm water and a shady place to rest. “I once tried to finish a barrel alone,” he said.
“Did you?”
“The barrel won.”
Chi Chi spent the afternoon watching the picnic from her leaf bed. When Pip Duckling started a mango-peel boat race, she was too queasy to join. Tuku’s boat sailed in a circle. Pip’s sank. A beetle won without knowing there was a race.
By sunset, Chi Chi’s stomach had settled. She fetched a cloth and helped Moti scrub the sticky trail from the barrel to the cone basket.
One orange patch would not come off her chest.
“A souvenir,” said Moti.
At home, Papa served vegetable soup. A round carrot floated in Chi Chi’s bowl.
She stared at it. The carrot stared back.
“Second helping?” Mama asked.
Chi Chi covered her bowl with both wings. “Please hide the barrel.”