Paulie to the rescue
The lady octopus that Paulie had met swam down to the seaweed patch and began picking the stems of seaweed, each with three berries on them. She held two of them in each of her six tentacles.
Paulie smiled, finally realizing what she was doing. When the octopus gathered the last piece of seaweed, she swam up to Paulie and said, “Lead the way.”
“Follow me!” exclaimed Paulie, darting off in the direction where he’d left his friends. All the while he was thinking, “I did it! I did it!”
“By the way, my name is Lilly,” said the octopus.
“I’m Paulie.”
“Nice to meet you, Paulie,” she smiled, keeping up with Paulie’s speed and trying not to drop the seaweed.
She wasn’t as fast as Paulie, so it took them a little longer to get back to the sick whale.
“Roger!” shouted Paulie. “We have the seaweed!”
Roger and I turned toward Paulie and saw the octopus carrying the seaweed. “I was wondering how he’d carry it,” I said.
“Good thing Lilly was there,” replied Roger with a bellowing laugh.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Sure do.” Roger leaned over toward me. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you get to know a lot of people.” He turned toward Clyde the whale and added, “Hang in there, big guy. The medicine is on its way.”
Clyde just smiled as best as he could. I’m sure his stomach was really hurting him.
As Lilly swam up to Roger, she wrapped all her tentacles around him and gave him a big hug. When she released him from her six-armed hug, the two of them swam over to Clyde.
Roger told Clyde, “OK, chew these in your mouth, but don’t swallow them, just squeeze out the juice of the berries.”
I saw Paulie gasp as he watched Lilly placing her tentacles inside the mouth of a whale. Clyde chewed the berries; then he spit them out.
Roger put his flipper on Clyde’s forehead and told him, “It will take a little time for the medicine to work, but you’ll be okay.”
“Will … will you all stay with me for a while?” he asked softly.
“You bet we will,” I said.
I swam over to Paulie and gave him a big hug. “You did real good, Paulie. Real good.” I could tell Paulie was very proud of himself.
“I had help,” he said, turning toward Lilly. He swam over to Lilly and gave her a hug. She wrapped her tentacle around him and hugged him back.
I was very curious about what made Clyde sick. He was so far from his home, and it seemed very strange to me. So I asked him.
Still tired and a bit weak, Clyde managed to reply, “I was swimming through the Gulf Stream current, and a day later I was feeling dizzy. I couldn’t figure out which way I was going, and then I ended up on the beach.”
“What could do that?” asked Paulie. “You know, make a big whale like you sick?”
Roger frowned. “I know what it was,” he said, and he wasn’t happy about it.
Tags: Clyde, eartha, helping others, jolly roger, medicine, paulie, sick, whale
Posted by Dan under From Eartha | Permalink