Hercules and the Hydra.

Hercules was a hero from ancient Greece. He was son of Zeus, and he had a supernatural strength. During his life he had to achieve some incredible tasks: the very famous "twelve labours". One of them was to kill a terryfing monster called "Hydra".

In the place of Lerna, in ancient Greek, there was a horrible and awful monster called Hydra. It had nine heads, it lived in a very deep cave and it loved to kill and eat up cattle and people. Hercules, who was a hero, knew about it and decided to kill the monster.

But when Hercules arrived to the cave and started to cut off Hydra's heads, he could check that when he slashed one, other two ones appeared from the bloody neck. Astonished, he flew away. Fortunately a nephew of him, called Iolalus, was over there. He was very intelligent, and he told Hercules that when cutting off heads, it was necessary to burn the wound in order to avoid the raising of new heads.

So both ones, Iolalus and Hercules, returned to the Hydra's cave. There, Hercules started again chopping heads; but this time his nephew burnt the wounds. Hydra didn't raise new heads, and so Hercules could finish his task, killing the hideous animal.