One morning Tigger awoke feeling funny. His toes tingled and his nose wriggled, and he bounced out of bed with a loud HICCUP!
"I'll just hold my breath," he said, bouncing higher and higher with every HICCUP! "Or sip some water." But no matter what he did, his hiccups wouldn't stop.
"I better get some HICCUP! help," he said, and he bounced right out his door and down the path into Rabbit's garden. "I have a HICCUP! problem," he called, bouncing all over Rabbit's beautiful vegetables.
"You're trampling my carrots! You're squishing my squash!" Rabbit cried.
"Can't HICCUP! help it!" replied Tigger.
"Have you tried wiggling your ears and winking one eye?" asked Rabbit.
Tigger tried, but it didn't work. So he bounced off to find another remedy.
"Hiya, HICCUP! Owl," Tigger said, bouncing into his wise friend's home. "You're smart - you must know a cure for the HICCUP!"
"You must recite the alphabet backwards, then forwards," Owl advised.
So Tigger tried it: "Z, Y, X, HICCUP! A, B, C." He bounced right into Owl's bookshelf, knocking all of his books to the floor. "Sorry, Owl!" he HICCUPed as he hurried off to find Pooh.
"I have a cure that always works," Pooh said, demonstrating. "You stand on one foot while you rub your tummy with one hand and eat some delicious honey with the other."
"HICCUP! HICCUP! HICCUP! It seems to make it worse!" Tigger said. His bouncing was out of control. All of Pooh's honey pots tumbled off the cupboard shelves and onto the floor.
"This is quite serious," said Owl as he and Rabbit looked it on the mess Tigger was making in Pooh's house. "We must find a way to cure Tigger."
"Think hard," instructed Owl. "How did this start?"
"I was sleeping and I felt a feather from my pillow tickle my nose," answered Tigger. "The next thing I knew - HICCUP!"
"Hmmmm," Owl said. "That gives me an idea." He huddled with Rabbit and Pooh. "I think we can make Tigger's hiccup stop the same way they started," he said. Rabbit and Pooh nodded - they knew what needed to be done.
"Hey! HICCUP! What's going on?" Tigger asked, as Owl, Rabbit and Pooh surrounded him. They tickled his tummmy until he wriggled and giggled.
"Stop! Stop!" Tigger laughed. "That tickles!" By the time they stopped tickling Tigger, something else had stopped, too. "My hiccups - they're gone! I'm cured!"
"Hooray!" cheered his friends.
"HICCUP!"
The friends stared at Tigger.
"Just kidding," he chuckled. Then he bounced happily back home.