Once upon a time, in an open savannah, lived a herd of five beautiful giraffes. There was a father and mother giraffe, Georges and Gina, with their three children: Jill, Jack, and Jimmy. Every afternoon, they’d meet at the big tree to play all sorts of games together. The children loved to dance and run around, kicking their feet high into the air, all except one.
Out of all the giraffes, Gina was the biggest and the oldest, but she was also the clumsiest. While her children kicked up their feet in the air, Gina would kick hers up but always seemed to trip over them. It was quite a sight! Her husband and kids often squinted their eyes and shook their heads, saying, “Oh Gina, when will you learn to be careful? You should watch where you put your feet!”
But Gilly never complained, chasing butterflies through the grass and bumping against trees. As the days went by, all the little ones learned to jump back when Gilly came close, for fear of being stepped on. Even the grasshoppers didn’t care to come near and nearly cried when they saw their green, waving homes destroyed by poor Gina’s careless feet.
One sunny day, Georges announced a three-legged race. It sounded like a lot of fun. All the little giraffes, except for their poor awkward mother, got into pairs just as fast as they could. George held the dinner bell high in the air, and all were to start racing at the sound of it by stepping quickly into the bucket at the end.
The bell rang, and off they went! Each pair carefully stepped together as they raced along with heads and feet held high. Now the race was drawing to a close, and Georges was near the winning post, but one pair was far behind, for Gina’s own feet never would keep time with her daughter’s, and so they lost the race. The rest of the family ran very softly away, and then stopped near the winning post to enjoy their little joke.
“Come on, clumsy toes!” cried her husband sarcastically. “You don’t mean to lose the race, do you?”
“That’s what I call odd toes!” cried Jill. That was all the rest chanced to say before they all burst out into irrepressible giggles again. They then returned to their happy go-as-you-please home, loving and caring for her all the same.
They never forgot that tale and called her “clumsy toes.” But somehow there was a merry kind of good-natured love and a skipping of the heart to see their mother take it so good-humouredly, never let her tears fall. Yet she was as happy and as merry as any one—a warning and a lesson surely to us all. But if we were to ask about it, Gilly could not tell us why it always was so.
Now, every clairvoyant palm reader, or every fortune-teller, is inclined to state to us that our fortunes, or anything else we should like to hear about, depends in some wonderful mysterious way, upon the month in which we were born. Everybody has never studied all this, or heard all the various works on palm reading. But one thing everybody does know, whether they think their birthdays help or not, and that is that the clumsiest one in the world must have been born in the merry month of May. And if there ever was a giraffe that was at all clumsy in her old age, it was none other than poor, clumsy Gina!