Fib, the Dung Beetle

In a horse stable somewhere away, there lived a dung beetle named Fib. Fib was born with five legs, and it was how he got his name. The "F" "I" from "five", and the "B" from "beetle".

Usually, beetles with five legs were not born with five legs; instead, they lost one of their legs in battles which was considered gallant. Fib was born with five legs, and was thus, considered a freak.

Fib was made fun of when he was young. His peers did not take to him for posing as someone who lost his leg in a battle, even though Fib had not deliberately cut off his own leg at birth. When he was quite grown up, it was worse, because he finally understood what the women-folk said about his mother sleeping with the horse ("five legs is exactly the average of six legs plus four legs, you know").

Thus, Fib took it upon himself to be crazy about dung collecting, he wanted to provide for his mother, so he worked very hard. He also hoped that by working hard and doing good it would quell the rumours and gossips and whatever bad reputation, so that he could make some friends and live happily. It was hard for a dung beetle with five legs to roll dung, because he was one leg short on one side, and it was harder to make the dung ball round. Yet that was not enough to stop Fib, who worked hard against the odds to roll a lot of dung balls for his family.

Alas! The other beetles just made remarks like "Wow, Fib must really be the horse's son, because the horse dotes on him enough to shit in little pellet balls especially for him. How else could he be able to have so many dung balls? He has only five legs, surely he couldn't have rolled them all by himself. Even if he did, they wouldn't be so round, he is five-legged, you know."