The Curious Lobster

by Richard W. Hatch

  “I wonder if I am independent,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “Of course you are. You live in the Ocean, and you want to be on land. When you are in one place and insist on being in another, that is a sure sign of independence—especially if you go there, as you do.”

  “That pleases me,” said Mr. Lobster. “All in all, this has been a joyous day; I have learned so much. And you have no idea how much I have enjoyed your story. But now I must go home.”

  With that he said “Good-by,” waved his right claw at Mr. Badger, and fell in the river.

  On his way home he thought: “What a wonderful day! I have learned about a tree and an owl. I have satisfied more of my curiosity about the land. I have shown the sculpin that I am independent, for I have gone ashore again and am returning safely. Another thing—I have discovered that rain is not good at all, since it is nothing but water with the salt left out. Just wait until I see the sculpin!”

  There Is Trouble Brewing

  AS LUCK would have it, before Mr. Lobster reached home he saw the sculpin in the distance. At first he thought that he would swim right over and tell the sculpin what a joyous day he had had. But then he remembered just in time that he was independent. If the sculpin wanted to hear the news he would have to come to Mr. Lobster. So Mr. Lobster went quite near the sculpin but pretended that he didn’t see him at all. Instead of looking the sculpin’s way, he gave some especially tremendous snaps of his tail and went past the sculpin at a very good rate of speed, sending up a great cloud of sand as he went along. That night he had an enjoyable rest. Mr. Lobster found that he slept best after a happy day, which was one of the reasons he liked happy days.

  In the morning, when he looked out from his house, he saw the sculpin approaching. The sculpin was being very slow and dignified, and was going along as though he were just out for any old kind of a swim, but it was plainly to be seen that he was really coming to Mr. Lobster’s house.

  “So,” thought Mr. Lobster.

  The sculpin swam up to a place just in front of Mr. Lobster’s house and then, it appeared, accidentally discovered that he was there.

  “Good morning,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “Why, good morning,” said the sculpin. “This is indeed a very agreeable surprise—to go out for a short swim and meet you.”

  “You will usually meet me if you come to my house when I am home,” remarked Mr. Lobster.

  “Since I am so fortunate as to encounter you this morning,” said the sculpin in a grand manner, spreading his largest fin, “I believe I shall pay a little call.”

  “That is very nice of you, I am sure,” said Mr. Lobster.

  The sculpin cleared his throat and then coughed. You could tell that he did by the bubbles, and by the fact that his fins trembled and his eyes rolled.

  “You know,” he said, “of course, I have been practically everywhere on the bottom of the Ocean and up the river. There is very little left for me to discover.” He was trying very hard to be charming without losing any of his importance. “But I must confess that I have never been on land.”

  “THERE IS VERY LITTLE LEFT FOR ME TO DISCOVER,” SAID THE SCULPIN.

  “Going on land is difficult for some people,” observed Mr. Lobster, coughing modestly. “It takes a great deal of practice, naturally. There are a great many little things, such as getting dry, for instance, which one has to keep in mind. You may remember that you said yourself that the land is a dry area. Still, I find that one who is skillful and courageous can acquire a great deal of knowledge by going ashore. And then, too, I have a good friend who lives ashore all the time.”

  The sculpin sighed and waved his fins. He was not an ill-natured fish at heart, but if there was one thing he could not stand it was anybody who knew more than he did. Being wise and dignified, the more he couldn’t stand a person the sweeter he was in conversation with that person.

  “You are a very wise—I should say, a very brilliant lobster,” he said now in his most gracious tone.

  Mr. Lobster realized at once that the sculpin was no fool after all.

  “I should be pleased,” the sculpin went on, “if you would tell me about the land. Unfortunately, one can’t have both wisdom and youth, and I have reached an age when I no longer care for adventure, or I should certainly go ashore myself.”

  “Of course,” agreed Mr. Lobster. “And I shall be delighted to tell you about it.”

  He thought he saw a look of slight pain come into the sculpin’s face as he settled down to listen, but the sculpin was so ugly it was hard to tell when he was pained and when happy. So Mr. Lobster started to tell about the land.

  This was the beginning of what appeared to be a friendship between Mr. Lobster and the sculpin. And it seemed to be a fine friendship, because each one realized the merits of the other without forgetting for a moment that his own merits were also very great. Some days the sculpin came to call. On other days Mr. Lobster stopped to talk on his way home from the river after a particularly nice walk which he knew the sculpin would love to have taken himself.

  Mr. Lobster explained the land almost faster than he learned about it. He explained trees and birds and rain.

  The sculpin explained more fully than before about the tides, how they worked, and why it was that, besides being an hour later each day, some days the tide went in the river in the morning and other days it went in in the afternoon.

  “You observe,” he said, “that it would be inconvenient for us fish to go up the river always in the morning or always in the afternoon. And it would be very monotonous. So the tides are arranged at different times of day.”

  Mr. Lobster was glad to know that. It was a relief to know that he would never have to go up the river by night. He did not like the dark. As he explained to himself: “Home is the best place to be after dark. In fact, that is one of the reasons for having a home, and I am wise enough to know it.”

  Some days after the beginning of this friendship between the sculpin and Mr. Lobster, there came about a change in Mr. Lobster’s habits. He learned that instead of going up the river, he could swim straight to shore and walk right out on the beach. That is, if the waves were not too big.

  As Mr. Lobster observed to himself after he tried this the first time, “Either the beach is just the bottom of the Ocean where it is out of water, or the bottom of the Ocean is the beach where it is under water. It is a very happy arrangement and was probably done by somebody on purpose.”

  It was Mr. Badger who had first suggested that Mr. Lobster come walking ashore on the beach.

  Mr. Badger said: “I suggest that now that you can walk so far and so well on the meadow you ought to walk on the beach. There you can practice for miles. Besides, I find it necessary now to fish from the beach. The owl has told me that badgers are never found on beaches; so of course I am going to see about that. I must preserve my independence. And besides again, if I keep hoisting you over the bank of the river I shall wear all the fur off my tail where you grab it. That will either make my tail look like a muskrat’s tail, which is a miserable object indeed, or it will make rings around my tail and I shall look like a raccoon. And a raccoon is an inferior creature. It can’t dig burrows but has to climb trees, which is extremely silly.”

  “I should say it was,” agreed Mr. Lobster, who knew that he could never climb a tree. “Who would want to climb trees?”

  “No one in his right mind, of course,” said Mr. Badger. “Trees are for poor things like birds, who have nowhere else to go. Besides, you are supposed only to fly into trees. And besides again, the tops of trees are a long way from the ground.”

  Mr. Lobster shuddered at the thought of being in a tree and not having wings. He wondered, though, what it would be like to fly. In fact, now that he came to think about it, he began to feel curious about it, and he wished that he could fly just once.

  But he said nothing. He did not care to diminish Mr. Badger’s respect for him, and he suspected that Mr. Badger had no use for creatures
that flew.

  Mr. Lobster said to himself: “I find that it is necessary to have some secrets even from my friends. I shall say nothing to Mr. Badger about flying until I have fully accomplished it. It is wiser to tell modestly about what you have done than to brag about what you are going to do.”

  Almost every day he walked on the beach, and almost every day Mr. Badger fished from the beach, throwing his line out into the Ocean beyond the waves, and sometimes catching some very fine fish.

  “I have discovered,” he told Mr. Lobster one day, “that the biggest fish live in the biggest places. Now either somebody made the place big because the fish were so big, or the fish are big because somebody made the place so big. I wish I knew which. But even if I don’t it is a delightful thought to meditate upon, because it is a riddle without any answer.”

  “I realize that it is a deep subject,” said Mr. Lobster, “but I do not know what a riddle is. I have never seen one.”

  “You don’t see them. You hear them,” explained Mr. Badger. “A riddle is just a question with an answer that makes you angry if you don’t know it, and makes the person who asks it angry if you do know it.”

  “I see.”

  “You mean, you hear.” Mr. Badger chuckled. “Riddles are usually very silly. This one is a delightful one because there is no answer. So nobody will be angry.”

  Mr. Lobster enjoyed walking on the beach, even though he never met anything pleasant to eat there. He could look away into the blue distance and see the woods, which he was curious to see close at hand. And he walked farther and farther every day, getting stronger and stronger, and able to stay out of water longer and longer. He was just waiting for the time when he could walk so far and stay out so long that he could go anywhere.

  Mr. Badger warned him not to go too far alone.

  “Don’t fear,” said Mr. Lobster, who was becoming very confident. “I always keep a weather eye out.”

  “Good heavens, how do you do that?” exclaimed Mr. Badger. “You don’t mean to tell me that you have more eyes than I can see, and that you keep one out?”

  Mr. Lobster was delighted to find out that he knew something Mr. Badger didn’t. It seemed to him that he was always asking Mr. Badger questions.

  “That is a sea-faring expression,” he said. “It means that I am always on the watch lest some unpleasant event catch me unawares. Like drying up, or a shark.”

  The reason that Mr. Lobster had to walk back and forth on the beach all alone was that Mr. Badger would not go with him.

  “Walking is supposed to take you somewhere,” Mr. Badger explained carefully. “But walking to and fro only brings you right back where you started. That isn’t really walking. It’s only exercise. And I hate exercise; it has no excitement in it. So you will please excuse me from walking with you here.”

  One day when the tide was going in during the afternoon there began a most unpleasant adventure for Mr. Lobster.

  Mr. Lobster was late. He met four small flounders and one very small sand-dab on his way to the beach. So he stopped to catch them, which was pleasant; but he was late getting ashore. And when he walked down the beach to the place where Mr. Badger was fishing he saw at once that something was wrong. Mr. Badger, usually the happiest person in the world, and full of jokes, looked unhappy.

  Mr. Lobster thought that he would cheer up Mr. Badger.

  “What a beautiful day,” he said. “Are you a badger today or something else?”

  “It is a terrible day,” said Mr. Badger in a gloomy voice. “A terrible day. The most terrible day I have ever seen. And what I am today is a miserable creature.”

  “Why, what is the matter?”

  “It is a long story,” Mr. Badger sighed. “And I may not live long enough to tell it before a disaster befalls me, but I shall try.”

  “You must!” cried Mr. Lobster. He was instantly sympathetic and terribly curious. “You must tell me, and maybe I can help you and restore your happiness.”

  Mr. Badger sighed again more deeply than before.

  “No, I am afraid I am beyond your help, though you are very kind indeed. I am afraid the time has come for me to suffer, and I hate suffering. It’s all the owl’s fault.”

  “But the owl isn’t here,” put in Mr. Lobster.

  “I will tell you,” said Mr. Badger. “You remember, I told you that the owl said no badger ate fish or was found on the beach. And how I immediately began to eat fish and finally even came to this beach, even though I hate fish, and I would much rather be in my own burrow. Well, last night I decided that I would go back to eating meat and living in my own warm burrow instead of under a leaky old stump in the woods. I have really been quite homesick.”

  “I remember,” said Mr. Lobster. “I did not understand very well, except that you were being independent.”

  “Exactly.” Mr. Badger sighed deeply. “Now last night, when I decided to go back to my old way of life, I thought I had better see the owl and ask him if there was anything else a badger didn’t ever do. Because I knew that if there wasn’t then I could go home in peace. You have no idea how I have longed for the comforts of my home.”

  “Oh, I have! I have!” exclaimed Mr. Lobster. “Home is always the place where you are the most comfortable.”

  “How true that is.” Mr. Badger groaned. “Well, the owl said, after a great deal of thought and keeping me waiting, that there was one other thing a badger never could do. He could never eat vegetables. So I decided that I would eat a vegetable immediately and then go home. And, as it seemed foolish to bother the owl with any more questions, I decided that once I had eaten a vegetable I would never ask him another thing. Then I stole the vegetable.”

  “You stole it!”

  “I stole it.” Mr. Badger’s tone was serious. “It is very difficult to find vegetables at night. They are inferior, and do not make noises or move about like a proper diet. So I went to the house of Mr. Bear, the finest house in our woods, and there was Mr. Bear asleep by the stove. And I went in very quietly and stole all his corn. Corn is a vegetable. It didn’t taste a bit good, but I ate it all. Of course, you have to eat whatever you steal. And Mr. Bear woke up and saw me, and I had to run for my life. I can tell you, I was frightened almost to death. And all the owl’s fault, you see.”

  “Of course,” agreed Mr. Lobster. “Although I don’t see why you had to steal the corn.”

  “We won’t discuss that now,” said Mr. Badger. “To discuss why you do foolish things after you do them is useless. What I am about to tell you is that Mr. Bear didn’t catch me, but today, while I was fishing here, he did catch me.”

  “Well, you are still alive,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “For the present, yes. But only for the present, I am afraid. You see, when I begged his pardon for stealing his corn, and explained that it was all the owl’s fault, and that the owl had made me miserable for weeks by telling me things I couldn’t do, so that I had to do them, Mr. Bear said: ‘Very well, you must catch me six large fish for my supper, to take the place of the corn you stole. And if you don’t—’ I shudder to think what he meant. And I have caught only five fish. I have given those to him, but he says I must catch another. And there isn’t another. So I am lost.”

  Mr. Lobster thought seriously.

  “I have it,” he said. “I shall go out into the Ocean and swim around and see where there is a large fish near shore. Then I shall come back and tell you where to throw your line.”

  With these words Mr. Lobster crawled down to the water and began swimming. He swam all along the bottom of the Ocean just beyond the breakers and looked as hard as he could. But he didn’t see a single large fish. He caught a small fish and thought of taking that to Mr. Badger, but then he knew it would not be big enough. So he simply ate it.

  Finally he returned to the beach and went up to Mr. Badger.

  “I am very sorry,” he said. “I did not see a single large fish.”

  “I knew it,” said Mr. Badger. “I knew it. T
his is probably the end of our friendship. Doubtless I shall be fried.”

  “Fried?” asked Mr. Lobster. “What do you mean?”

  “That means being burned with fire, which is the hottest heat there is and extremely dangerous. Mr. Bear boasts that he is the most civilized creature in the woods, and so, to prove it, he fries much of his food. He will probably fry me with the five fish I have succeeded in catching him.”

  “I suppose,” said Mr. Lobster thoughtfully, “that frying dries one up.”

  “Frying does,” said Mr. Badger sadly. “Also, frying is permanent.”

  Mr. Lobster could feel himself getting dry at the very thought of such a thing. But at the same time he was thinking a heroic thought.

  “Pardon me for a few minutes,” he said. “I feel a bit nervous.” And he hastily crawled back into the Ocean and got himself good and wet, so that all the hinges of his tail and all his other hinges felt fine.

  Then he crawled back to Mr. Badger.

  “Where is Mr. Bear?” he asked.

  “He is behind that huge boulder over there.” Mr. Badger pointed a sad and drooping paw toward a great boulder at the edge of the beach.

  “Very well,” said Mr. Lobster. “Mr. Bear is not my enemy, for I have not stolen from him. So I shall go over and engage him in conversation. I can tell him a great many things. While I am talking to him, and he is carefully listening, you can run away and he won’t see you go.”

  “How brave you are!” exclaimed Mr. Badger. For the moment Mr. Badger seemed almost happy. “But you are nervous, Mr. Lobster. I can see your joints shaking.”

  “Being brave is the most nervous thing there is,” replied Mr. Lobster. “Nevertheless, I shall go.”

  “No.” Mr. Badger’s tone was sad again. “Mr. Bear is not to be trifled with. I shall not let you risk your life for me. I can’t allow it.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Lobster. “As if Mr. Bear could hurt me. I have one of the hardest shells you have ever seen. Besides, I am your friend. And a friend has the right to do anything for you that he sees fit.”