OH TO BE A CRAB NOW THAT SUMMER'S HERE

A silly yarn the just about wrote itself...

It was the perfect day for a walk across Dingle Bottoms and down to the babbling brook that wandered like a lost soul through Dingle Meadow. The sun was up there in the sky, not interfered with by clouds. A few lazy birds fluttered from the water to their nests in Dingle Woods that stretched down almost to the stream on the other side.

Daisy Saunders, proud octogenarian, was happy there. It seemed almost madness to her that she was all alone in paradise when there were so many corners of creation that could be investigated within a few footsteps of where she wandered, but that was the way that it was.

She reached the stream, and paused. Its waters looked so inviting, and she stooped to cup a few drops in her hand and raise them to her lips. It wasn’t so easy at her age, but she managed, and sighed at the sheer pleasure of feeling icy water on her lips.

“How dared you!” snapped a voice, and she almost jumped out of her elderly leather sandals because as far as she was concerned there was nobody anywhere near her.

“Who’s that?” she called, her voice wavering.

“Me!” snapped the reply. “It’s my water, so who told you it was alright for you to take it? What almighty cheek you creatures have, using my world as your own private larder and actually drinking it! Who told you it was alright, eh?”

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice trembling because she was perfectly sure there was nobody anywhere near and maybe she was talking to herself, hearing voices forged in her own head because that’s what old people do.

“Look down!” snapped the voice, “look into my home and you’ll see me!”

So she did. She looked down as if it would be quite reasonable to see someone floating in the water, a nymph maybe, or a fairy, though at her age she had no right to believe in either. But there was nobody there.

“Well then?” asked the voice.

“I must be having a funny turn,” she said aloud, though she had intended to do no more than think it to herself. “There’s nobody down there at all,” she added just in case there was and whoever it was thought her mad.

“Then look again! I’m down here, standing on a pebble watching you with my sharp eyes and wondering what I must do in order to get rid of you!” snapped the voice.

So she looked again.

All she could see, standing on an ancient smooth stone that was half-submerged in the babbling waters was a freshwater crab, small and delicate and gazing up at her through eyes that looked more baleful than sharp.

“A crab?” she asked, “am I talking to a crab?”

“Call me what you like, though I can’t say I’m partial to the word crab,” replied the voice.

“If you’re not a crab, then what are you?” asked Daisy, curiously, while inside her head she was asking herself why on Earth she was talking to a tiny almost opaque crab sitting on a stone in the middle of a swirling current of icy water. Maybe, she thought senility had finally wiped her brain of anything sensible. Maybe this was it, the beginning of the end as she debated high and mighty things with a minuscule crab.

“Call me a crab if you must,” came the reply, and she was sure it was sound that her ears could detect and convert into words for her head to interpret.

“It’s our name for you,” she said, convinced of her own state of mindlessness. After all, even if crabs could talk, were they likely to choose English as their chosen tongue when there are so many other languages to choose from?

“And you think that’s good enough?” barked the crab, and she was sure that she could see its mouth moving in exact harmony with the words.

“It’s all I know,” she confessed.

“It is? How sad,” replied the crab, “when there are so many wonderful things all around you. Even I, on this ancient stone, can see so many splendours. I can even feel the long ages through my feet, where the stone, smoothed by an age being tossed around in a warm ocean long, long ago, touches them! And you say that all you know is the word crab!”

“I know other things,” mumbled Daisy, “but when it comes for words to describe you I only know crab.”

“Tell me what you know then that isn’t a word like crab or have anything to do with we crustaceans,” invited the tiny creature inquisitively. “Tell me about the world around you. Tell me about the dry Earth, the stuff you are standing on.”

“Soil and grass,” she offered, confused. “Excuse me, Mr Crab, but I must sit down on the grass. I feel… sort of weak. You see, I’m really quite old.”

“I’m getting on a bit too,” confessed the crab, “I doubt I’ll see another winter and feel its icy fingers on my shell.”

“I think I’d better go before someone discovers me talking to you,” sighed Daisy, “because if they do they’ll lock me in a loony-bin for being mad!”

“Go if you can, though I’m betting you can’t,” grinned the crab.

“Of course I can!” replied Daisy, and she struggled onto her feet. “See, Mr Crab,” she said, “I’ll be off home, so goodbye!”

“No you won’t,” almost laughed the crab.

But Daisy was strong-willed and somehow found the strength to take at first one step and then another away from the babbling brook and the teasing crustacean.

“Silly old you,” grinned the crab, “you’ve left yourself behind!”

“Nonsense,” sighed Daisy, and she glanced behind her to see the old woman slowly roll to one before lying still as the dead.

“And silly old woman!” she added as she walked jauntily back up Dingle Bottoms toards her home, going sideways for comfort.

© Peter Rogerson 02.08.21

...