Grumpy was a white Mule and lived down the Muger River valley at Kusai. He was rather grumpy and used to bray at people. He used to either try and bite people or kick them. The trouble was that he was very useful, he had small feet so he could walk up very narrow paths.
If we went down to Kusai where we had a small bungalow, we could ride him up the very steep cliff pathway. This pathway was very narrow with sheer cliffs above and below the path. It was quite easy to walk down so long as you watched where you put your feet.
There was a length of the path which we called the silent bit where we children were forbidden to speak as it was so dangerous.
Coming up we took another pathway which was longer but safer.
This is why Grumpy was so useful because we could ride him up.
One day however, he absolutely refused to let us get on his back and kicked and brayed at us so we could not get near him. When we finally managed to catch hold of him, we realised what the trouble was. One of his teeth was in bedded in a very swollen mouth. He had dreadful toothache, no wonder he was being especially grumpy, poor thing. Luckily, we had a friend called Gully, who was very good at getting peoples teeth out. So, we sent a message to him asking him to come and take Grumpy’s tooth out. He came quite quickly and while we held onto Grumpy’s head, he managed to pull the tooth out.
We then gave Grumpy a large spoonful of honey which masked the pain and after a few hours Grumpy’s mouth was back to normal and he nuzzled the man who had extracted the tooth. Grumpy was still a bit grumpy but that is quite normal for mules.