The Curious Lobster

by Richard W. Hatch

  Mr. Bear saw the twinkle.

  “You are not sorry at all!” he growled.

  “Well, you have to admit that’s a joke on you,” said Mr. Badger. “And after all, you thought you were dead, and here you are alive.”

  “What’s the use of being alive if I’ve got no supper?” asked Mr. Bear unhappily. “Do you mean to say I must leave all my fish?”

  “Yes, I think that would be just right to pay for the oars. It will be a lesson to us not to borrow things and break them.”

  “How about your fish?” asked Mr. Bear.

  “I shall take my fish, thank you,” said Mr. Badger. “I must be rewarded, for it was my idea to go out on the Ocean and catch them.”

  Mr. Bear growled in such rage that it looked as though the three fishermen were going to part anything but friends. Mr. Lobster trembled so that his shell rattled. Mr. Badger was just enjoying himself.

  “I think I shall be going home,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “So shall I,” said Mr. Badger. “Sometime I shall be able to thank you fully for saving my life a second time. It was a beautifully narrow escape, and as soon as I am dry and at home it will give me a great deal of pleasure.”

  Mr. Badger started to walk away.

  “You haven’t taken your fish,” called Mr. Bear.

  “Oh, I have changed my mind,” answered Mr. Badger. “I don’t really care for fish. Wouldn’t you like a few, my dear Mr. Bear?”

  So Mr. Bear got his fish after all, and they all went home happy, although Mr. Bear, as he went, was growling softly over the trick Mr. Badger had played on him.

  The Three Friends Almost Have a Picnic

  OF COURSE, Mr. Lobster went ashore again the very next day. He knew that Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear would be grateful to him for saving their lives; so of course he was eager to see them.

  “There is nothing so pleasant,” he said to himself, “as going to meet two friends for whom you have done a great favor. And I do like pleasant meetings. They add pleasure to life.”

  It was a beautiful summery day, the kind of day that often comes after a storm to make up for all the trouble the storm has caused. The sky had been washed clean. The clouds were snowy white. Even the old Ocean seemed in a very contented state, for its waves were small and gentle and made very little noise upon the beach.

  When Mr. Lobster reached the river bank, Mr. Badger and Mr. Bear were waiting for him.

  “Hail to the hero!” cried Mr. Badger. “How are things going under the Ocean today? Take hold of my tail and come ashore.”

  When Mr. Badger had pulled him ashore, Mr. Lobster answered his question.

  “Things are very quiet under the Ocean,” he said.

  “Well, they are quiet here too,” said Mr. Badger. “Very quiet after such an exciting day as yesterday. Mr. Bear and I have just been talking with pleasure about the narrowness of our escape. I shall get pleasure from remembering it as long as I live.”

  “Pardon me,” put in Mr. Bear gruffly, “but Mr. Badger has been doing all the talking, as usual. I am sure I get no pleasure at all from narrow escapes. But I do want to thank you, Mr. Lobster, from the bottom of my heart for saving my life.”

  “Oh, it was nothing,” said Mr. Lobster, trying to be modest, though he was glowing with pleasure under his shell.

  “There now!” Mr. Badger broke right out laughing. “You see, Mr. Bear, he says your life was nothing.”

  “What! Why, it has always meant a great deal to me,” said Mr. Bear, beginning to look cross.

  “Please!” exclaimed Mr. Lobster. “You must not take Mr. Badger seriously. Why, he does not take himself seriously, and some days he isn’t even a badger. I meant that what I did was nothing.”

  “Just what I said!” exclaimed Mr. Badger. “He said that saving your life was nothing. Think of it! It was an act of no importance.”

  “You know very well I meant nothing at all like that!” protested Mr. Lobster.

  Mr. Badger chuckled.

  “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “When people thank you for a gift or a great favor you must never say it is nothing. That makes the gift or favor seem very mean. You should say very kindly: ‘You are very welcome,’ or ‘I am very glad I could be of service.’ You don’t get any credit in this world if you are always belittling yourself. Now I, for instance, know I am a hero and admit it freely.”

  “You certainly do,” said Mr. Bear. He growled softly. He was not really cross, because now he saw that Mr. Badger had been having one of his jokes.

  Everybody was happy and contented, it seemed.

  “As I was going to say,” Mr. Badger remarked finally, “it is very quiet here. That is wrong. I believe that something should always be happening. That is my motto. And if it isn’t happening, then I believe in making it happen.”

  “What would you suggest happening?” asked Mr. Bear suspiciously. “Something a little different from going out on the raging Ocean and nearly getting drowned, if you please.”

  “I have an idea,” said Mr. Badger.

  “I was afraid of that,” said Mr. Bear. “I think I shall go home. Your last idea was enough for me.”

  But Mr. Lobster, of course, was curious.

  “Tell us what it is!” he begged.

  “I will,” said Mr. Badger happily. He loved to be the center of attention, just as all jokers do. “I propose that in honor of Mr. Lobster’s saving Mr. Bear’s life, which was nothing, and mine, which was the life of a hero and worth a great deal, we all have a picnic.”

  “A picnic!” growled Mr. Bear. “Well, that might be a pleasure after all. Surely there is no risk in that.”

  “Oh, you never can tell what will happen on a picnic,” said Mr. Badger. “That’s just why I want to have one.”

  “Please excuse me for being so ignorant,” murmured Mr. Lobster. “But you land creatures do such strange things. My curiosity is aroused at once. I don’t even know what a picnic is.”

  “Oh, it is quite simple,” said Mr. Badger. “A picnic means not eating your food at home, but wrapping it up and taking it away and eating it somewhere you would never think of eating it naturally. It takes twice as much work as a regular meal, you have to carry it so far; but it is twice as much fun eating it, because you don’t have to have any manners to speak of.”

  “I don’t see how anything that is twice as much work can be twice as much fun,” said Mr. Bear. “That is beyond me. It sounds unreasonable.”

  “A picnic is always unreasonable,” agreed Mr. Badger. “Everything is that’s done just for fun. And you wait and see if you don’t have a good time.”

  “I would like to try a picnic,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “Good!” said Mr. Badger. “Now my idea is that this will be a surprise picnic. Each one of us must bring lunch for someone else. I shall bring Mr. Lobster’s lunch. Mr. Bear will bring my lunch, and Mr. Lobster will bring Mr. Bear’s lunch. And we mustn’t tell what we’re going to bring.”

  “That will be fun!” exclaimed Mr. Lobster. He was already curious about what Mr. Badger would bring him.

  “Where shall we have the picnic?” asked Mr. Bear.

  “Well, the important thing about a picnic is that a place to eat the lunch you have brought is never really suitable unless it is hard work getting the lunch there. The hardest place I can think of is the very end of the beach, by the cliff. It is also lonely, and there is no shelter if storms come up, which is one of the important chances you must take on a picnic.”

  “It will take me all the morning to bring lunch there,” said Mr. Bear. “And I shall have a terrible appetite.”

  “It will take me hours and hours,” added Mr. Lobster.

  “Fine!” exclaimed Mr. Badger. “Then it is just the place.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Mr. Bear now, “I think I’ll be going home before you have another idea. I can see that this is going to require thought.”

  “We must all meet at the picnic tomorrow,” said Mr. Ba
dger.

  So the three friends parted, and Mr. Lobster went slowly down the river and home again.

  As soon as he was home he began to think about what he would take to the picnic for Mr. Bear. The most delicate pleasant creature he could think of catching was a small sand-dab or a flounder. Possibly a perch would be all right. So he sat where he could look out of his house and watch the beautiful seaweed garden.

  Not a single pleasant creature came into the garden all the afternoon. One old gray cod came along who was so big Mr. Lobster knew he could never catch him. A little later there was an enormous skate who looked most unpleasant. There were also two or three crabs, very young crabs, who came and played in the garden, chasing each other backwards, but they were distant relatives of Mr. Lobster.

  Finally Mr. Lobster went out for a short crawl, just to look around and see what he could catch. He realized that it would be disgraceful if he did not catch something for Mr. Bear’s picnic lunch.

  “Why, if I don’t get Mr. Bear’s lunch I can’t go,” he thought. “And I have to go because the picnic is in my honor.”

  He had been out about a half-hour when he met the sculpin.

  They exchanged greetings in a dignified manner, as usual.

  “You know,” said Mr. Lobster, “I am going to have lunch ashore tomorrow with some friends, and I must take lunch for one of my friends when I go, but I don’t know just what to take.”

  “I wish that you wouldn’t say that I know when I don’t know,” said the sculpin sternly. He was envious because he could not go ashore himself, and therefore more dignified than ever. “I did not know. Of course, if you must persist in your reckless wanderings, and must go ashore where you do not belong, it is obvious that the greatest of all delicacies is clams without their shells.”

  “Of course!” exclaimed Mr. Lobster. “To think that I was so stupid as to forget clams!”

  “I should say there were other things more stupid,” said the sculpin severely. “Such as going ashore, for example.”

  Mr. Lobster did not want to wait to hear any more advice from the sculpin.

  “Please excuse me,” he said, and he tail-snapped away very rapidly.

  As the beautiful green daylight was fading before the night, Mr. Lobster went straight home.

  Now Mr. Lobster considered clams without their shells the finest luncheon—or dinner, for that matter—that could be had. In fact, they were so good, they were good even for breakfast. The reason he did not have clams often was that it was very hard to get them. In the first place, the clams were shy, always hiding in the sand with only a small hole to show where they were buried. And then—and this made it even harder—it was a great deal of work to open a clam’s shell and get him out. And no one likes to eat clam-shells.

  “I suppose,” Mr. Lobster said to himself as he thought about the clams, “there must be a reason why things which are good to eat inside are not good to eat outside. But it seems very unfortunate at times, especially when the outside is as hard as a clam-shell.”

  He thought that he might gather a great many clams and take them to Mr. Bear in their shells.

  “No,” he decided, “that would be discourteous. A wise person is never discourteous, especially to anyone as big as a bear.”

  So very early the next morning he went out and started gathering clams. He had to hunt hard to find them, and each one he dug up he had to take home and take out of its shell. And each one looked so delicious when it was out of the shell that it was all Mr. Lobster could do not to eat them as fast as he caught them and got them ready.

  But he did not eat a single one, and he grew hungrier and hungrier because he didn’t have time to stop for any breakfast.

  After he had gathered and opened clams for hours, he looked around until he found an empty turtle-shell almost as big as he was. He dragged it home and put all the clams in it.

  “Certainly,” he said, “no one has ever seen any lunch as delicious as this. I bet there are a hundred clams without their shells here. How lucky Mr. Bear is! I wish I were bringing my own lunch!”

  When he began to drag the turtle-shell full of clams from his home all the way to the beach, he found that was the worst and hardest work of all. Mr. Badger had certainly told the truth. He dragged it with his tail when he went frontwards. Then he took hold with his claws and went backwards. Both ways the dragging was very difficult.

  “Surely I shall get some great happiness as a result of all this work,” he thought.

  Anyway, although he was tired and hungry, he dragged the turtle-shell all the way to shore and then up the beach to the lonely place at the foot of the great cliff. Then he covered it with a flat stone and was all ready before the others came.

  Mr. Badger came first. He was pushing a package wrapped in leaves, a very dirty and bedraggled package which kept coming unwrapped and rolling in the sand. Mr. Badger kept stopping to wrap it up again.

  “I have had a terrible time,” he said. “I have had to push this heavy package all the way. But it is delicious, I am sure of that. Wait until you see it.”

  Just then the package came unwrapped again, and a large object, already dirty and covered with sand, rolled out and became even more dirty and covered with sand.

  “Don’t look!” cried Mr. Badger, and he hastened to wrap it up.

  But Mr. Lobster was so curious that he had already looked before Mr. Badger spoke. However, as he couldn’t see anything but sand, his looking did not matter, and he was just as curious as ever and even more hungry.

  Mr. Lobster looked down the beach.

  A strange creature without any head was coming toward them.

  “We are going to have another narrow escape, I am afraid,” said Mr. Lobster.

  “No,” said Mr. Badger. “That must be Mr. Bear. For no one would come to such a desolate place as this unless he was coming to picnic.”

  Sure enough, it was Mr. Bear. He was coming backwards, dragging a tremendous parcel with his teeth. And now they could hear him growling as he came, and coughing from the sand in his mouth.

  “He is the funniest thing I have ever seen!” exclaimed Mr. Badger joyfully. “Mr. Bear will be furious. I knew a picnic would be lots of fun, and this one is starting out beautifully!”

  Mr. Bear kept coming backwards, his growls sounding louder and louder. Finally he almost backed into Mr. Badger.

  “Greetings!” said Mr. Badger. “Isn’t this going to be fun?”

  Mr. Bear looked up.

  “Well, I certainly hope so,” he said. “It hasn’t been anything but work so far. I have been walking backwards for hours. I kept running into things, and I am bruised all over.”

  “Cheer up!” said Mr. Badger happily. “Now we can eat our picnic.”

  Mr. Badger at once took charge of things. First they all sat in a kind of circle, although it was hard to make a circle out of three people, and so it was really a triangle.

  Then Mr. Lobster put the turtle-shell with the stone on it in front of Mr. Bear.

  Next Mr. Bear put his big package, which was almost as long as Mr. Badger, in front of Mr. Badger. The package was wrapped in newspaper, that being one of the signs that Mr. Bear was civilized.

  Lastly, Mr. Badger put his battered package in front of Mr. Lobster.

  “Now,” said Mr. Badger, “we can open our surprise packages and eat.”

  Mr. Bear was the biggest and so, of course, the hungriest. He removed the stone from the turtle-shell and looked at the big pile of clams without their shells.

  “What is this?” he asked rather impolitely.

  “Clams! The most delicious thing I know of,” answered Mr. Lobster proudly. Mr. Lobster’s mouth watered at the sight of them.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Bear, and there was a note of sad disappointment in his voice.

  In the meantime Mr. Badger had unwrapped his tremendous surprise package, and there was the biggest fish he had ever seen. And it was beautifully fried to a turn.

  “A fish!
” he cried, almost in horror.

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Bear. “That is the finest fish I have ever fried,” and he looked at the fish with the most hungry look a bear could ever have.

  Mr. Lobster had no difficulty in opening his surprise package because it was all in pieces anyway. There was a large piece of something all covered with sand.

  “Would you mind,” he said, looking at Mr. Badger, “telling me what is under the sand?”

  “Meat!” said Mr. Badger. “Yes, the most delicious piece of meat I ever stole. I got it this morning.” And he looked at it with such longing that the tears came into his eyes.

  “I see,” said Mr. Lobster.

  Then they all sat very still, not saying a word. And nobody started eating.

  Mr. Bear hated clams, especially clams which were not fried.

  Mr. Badger hated the very thought of fish after all he had eaten because the owl told him he mustn’t. And he hated fried things especially.

  Mr. Lobster never ate meat.

  And so there was a rather unhappy situation.

  “Well,” said Mr. Lobster sadly, looking at Mr. Bear’s delicious clams.

  “Well,” said Mr. Bear, looking at Mr. Badger’s delicious fried fish.

  It seemed as though nobody happened to be hungry now. The picnic suddenly had turned out to be a sad failure.

  Mr. Badger brightened up.

  “I have an idea!” he exclaimed. “It is polite to share one’s food, and we must be polite in some ways even on a picnic. So let us play a game. We must all get up and walk around and then sit down in somebody else’s place.”

  “Ah!” said Mr. Bear. This time he did not growl. He was looking at the fried fish.

  “I think that would be a good thing to do,” said Mr. Lobster. He was looking at the clams.

  “First, I had better do something,” said Mr. Badger. He was looking at Mr. Lobster’s meat. And he took the sandy object to the water, washed it carefully, and put it on a stone in front of Mr. Lobster.

  Mr. Lobster thought the meat looked worse than ever.

  “Now!” cried Mr. Badger. “And no fair crowding or pushing. One, two, three!”