Six arms are better than none
Paulie sped off toward the seaweed patch. As he made his way over the ridge, he finally saw it: seaweed spanned as far as his eye could see. It was like a green river under the ocean.
“I did it! I found the seaweed medicine!” he shouted, doing a backflip in the process. Looking around the seaweed, he realized he had a problem. Oh no, he thought. How am I going to carry the seaweed?
Paulie looked around for something he could use to carry the seaweed back to Jolly Roger. He swam around the seaweed patch trying to find a way to carry it. He picked one piece of seaweed and put it in his mouth.
“Therth no wayth I can fith all that theaweed in my mouf,” he mumbled through a mouth full of seaweed. He spit out the seaweed. I can make several trips, he thought. He looked back and forth between where the seaweed was and the direction his friends were. No, that won’t work. Roger said I needed to hurry. I don’t have time for twelve trips. Paulie began to panic, swimming in circles.
“What’s wrong, little one?” said a nearby voice.
Paulie turned to see a large female octopus hovering nearby. His first reaction was to be scared, but then he remembered he was scared of Roger too at first, and Roger had turned out to be a friend. “I … I … I need to, um, there’s a whale, and … um … I have to get the …” Paulie was nervous and panicking.
“Slow down, little one. Start at the beginning,” she said.
Paulie took a deep breath and started rambling. “Eartha, Alex and I were swimming, and we saw this cave. Then the rock fell and trapped us. Then we saw a monster, but it wasn’t a monster; it was a sea turtle that Eartha knew. And then we went to go see the sea turtle eggs, and Alex left ’cause he missed his family, and we saw the whale, and the whale is sick, and Jolly Roger told me to find the seaweed with the three berries, and here is the seaweed, but I can’t carry more than one at a time, and if I don’t make it back in time, I don’t know what will happen to the whale, and, hey, I just bit my tongue.” He did it all in one breath, so when he was done, he let out a long exhale.
The lady octopus blinked her eyes. “Did you say Jolly Roger?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Paulie, his eyes bright. “Do you know him?”
“Yes. He is a friend of mine.” She looked down at the seaweed patch, and said “Hmmm.”
Tags: medicine, octopus, paulie, seaweed
Posted by Dan under From Eartha | Permalink