The cave-in
Over the past few days, Alex and I have learned more and more about our new friend Paulie the parrotfish. He tells us stories. Actually, Paulie hasn’t stopped telling us stories. He likes to swim backwards while he talks, facing us as we swim:
“… and when I was two years old, I got caught in a net, and my parents had to chew through the net to get me out,” Paulie said. “And I once got caught in a plastic bag, and had to swim with it on me for a while until I learned I could swim backwards … Another time, I got chased by two barracuda and was rescued by a sea turtle and a stingray.” After saying that last part, he tilted his head, “Hey, wait a minute, that was you!” He chuckled as he continued to swim backwards.
“It seems you’ve gotten pretty good at swimming backwards,” I told him.
“Yup,” replied Paulie. “I’m what you’d call an expert at it.” As he finished his sentence, Paulie backed into a reef wall. This made me and Alex laugh.
We watched as several pieces of coral and rock broke off, revealing a small cave entrance.
Paulie shook off the piece of coral that landed on him, “I’m all right,” he said. “I have a hard head.” He was still facing backwards and didn’t see the cave. “What?” he asked.
“Look!” I said as I swam closer to the small opening to look inside. It was a cave. The opening was just wide enough for me to fit through. I began to swim through the opening.
“Where are you going?” asked Alex.
I turned back toward Alex, “I’m going to explore the cave.”
Alex swam up to the opening and looked inside, “Are you sure it’s a good idea?”
I turned to Alex, “We are adventurers. This is what we’re out here to do, right?”
Paulie swam up to the opening and looked in, “What if there is a monster in there, or a shark, or a monster shark?”
“There is only one way to find out,” I told him.
Alex went in first, and then I started to go through the opening. I thought I could fit, but I got a stuck halfway. I wiggled and wiggled until I was able to fit through. But all my wiggling made more coral and rocks fall. One big rock started falling, and Paulie saw it. He didn’t want to be alone, so he swam fast through the opening and bumped right into me.
I turned around and saw that the entrance to the cave was now blocked by all the falling rocks. It was now even darker in the cave since there was no light coming in from the opening.
Paulie got scared. He started trying to push the rock away from the opening, but it didn’t budge. Then he tried chewing on the rock with his large front teeth.
“Paulie!” I called out to him. “It will take you a month to chew through that.” Paulie stopped chewing and spit out a piece of rock.
“Let’s see if we can find another way out.” I smiled at him and motioned for him to come with me.
Paulie looked at the rock again, and I knew that he was thinking, “I can eat that.” He lowered his head, and slowly swam over to join me.
“Look,” said Alex.
We all looked down the tunnel and saw a small glowing light coming from the very end.
I looked over at Paulie and could see he was still scared. I pulled him closer to me and smiled.
I turned to Alex, “Let’s go.”
Tags: children, loggerhead, parrotfish, reef, sea turtle, shipwreck stingray, story, tale
Posted by Dan under From Eartha | Permalink