Little You-I, the baby dragon which Algy had discovered with its leg caught between stones in the burn, kept complaining that its foot hurt, and on inspection Algy guessed that it had probably sprained its ankle while twisting and turning among the stones in an attempt to get free.
The wee creature only had tiny wings: it was able to make fluttering jumps between one spot and another quite close by, in a way similar to a fledgling blackbird or thrush, but it could not fly very far at all. So Algy decided to give it a ride on his own back, and in this way he managed to carry it for a distance of a mile or so, until they reached his assistants' garden.
Borrowing a small bandage from his assistants' First Aid cabinet, Algy seated Little You-I in front of him on a large log and proceeded to bandage its ankle, all the while crooning a suitable poem for children, over and over again, to distract it from the pain. And he promised Little You-I that when its ankle was better, he would indeed take it to the beach, to play by the sea…
I’m walking (I’m walking) with my iguana (with my iguana) When the temperature rises to above eighty-five, my iguana is looking like he’s coming alive. So we make it to the beach, my iguana and me, then he sits on my shoulder as we stroll by the sea . . .
[Algy is crooning part of the poem for children Walking with my Iguana by the contemporary British poet Brain Moses.]
