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Gus was a giraffe with a problem. A big, spotty problem. One morning, he woke up and looked in the watering hole, and to his horror, he had lost all his spots! He was completely, utterly plain. He looked like a giant, beige banana on stilts. All the other giraffes stared at him. "Where are your spots, Gus?" they asked. "You look so… bare!"

Gus felt terribly embarrassed. "I don't know!" he wailed. "They're just… gone!"

He decided to go on a quest to find his missing spots. He started with the wise old chameleon, who was very good at finding things that were hard to see. "Old wise chameleon," Gus said, "I have lost my spots. Can you help me find them?"

The chameleon thought for a long time. "Your spots are a part of you, Gus," he said in a slow, thoughtful voice. "Maybe they are somewhere that is also you."

Gus had no idea what that meant, so he thanked the chameleon and went on his way. He asked the zebras if they had seen his spots, but they only offered him their stripes. He asked the leopard, who offered him a few of his, but Gus didn't think they'd quite match.

He felt a bit hopeless. It was getting dark. He sat down by a big baobab tree and sighed, a great, long, rumbly sigh. Suddenly, a little, tiny voice piped up from the tree. "Are you looking for these?"

Gus looked up. He saw a small, round owl, perched on a branch. But it wasn't just any owl. It was an owl covered in big, round, brown spots! "My spots!" Gus exclaimed.

"Oh, these aren't your spots, silly," the owl hooted. "These are my spots! I found them while I was flying around, and I thought they would make a lovely collection. I've been collecting them all week!"

Gus blinked. "But… where did you find them?"

"I found them on the ground, scattered everywhere," the owl said, a little smugly. "It was like a treasure hunt!"

Gus looked down at the ground. He realized what had happened. He had been running and playing so hard the day before that his spots had simply popped off! He and the owl spent the next hour collecting all the spots. The owl had found nearly a hundred of them. Gus carefully patted each one back into place, and as he did, he felt a little bit more like himself. When he was done, he felt wonderfully spotty again. He thanked the owl, who was now a very plain-looking bird, and promised to be a little more careful with his spots from now on.