Tarquin knew, without a doubt, that he was the crabbiest crab on any beach, anywhere, in the world.
“I can’t stand my job,” he moaned.
“Why?” his friend Horatio asked. “We have the best job in the world! Filling empty seashells with the sound of the ocean is awesome! Hey, you missed a shell.”
“I know,” Tarquin said. “I don’t care.”
Horatio gasped. “But… if a child picks up that shell, and there’s no sound in it…” Horatio quickly filled the shell.
“I can’t stand it,” Tarquin said. “Day after day. Shell after shell. Pick one up, blow the sound in, drop it. I’m sick of it. I want to do something different.”
A sea gull called overhead. A sandpiper cheeped. A flying fish spun out of the waves and fell, ker-plunk, back into the surf.
“What interesting sounds!” Tarquin clicked his claws together. “I’ve got an idea.”
Tarquin spent all night putting different sounds into each shell he found. Babies crying, car horns honking, blaring radios -- he used them all. The next day, he hid behind a pile of kelp when the children arrived. One by one, they built their sand castles, paddled in the waves, and finally picked up empty shells and put them to their ears.
The children didn’t appreciate Tarquin’s creativity. Some of them even cried!
What was worse, his boss, King Crab, found out.
“Dereliction of duty!” King Crab snapped.
“But…” Tarquin tried to explain.
“An oceanic outrage!”
“But…”
“One more shanghaied shell and you’ll really be in the melted butter!”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The next day, Tarquin did his job, stuffing shell after shell full of the sound of the surf, and (sometimes) the sound of a very unhappy crab crying.
A flying fish stopped jumping long enough to ask what was wrong.
“I have the worst job in the world,” Tarquin complained.
“You do?” The fish goggled his eyes. “Try jumping out of the water two thousand times a day next to a cruise ship. I never get a break. Every time I think I’ll just swim a bit, somebody pokes his head over the side, yells “Where’s the flying fish?” and I’m on again. Exhausting!”
“Wow,” Tarquin said. He had always thought the flying fish were having fun.
He wandered down the beach until he met a seagull crouched behind a piece of driftwood.
“What are you doing?” Tarquin asked.
“Hiding from those people,” the seagull squawked softly.
“Those people?” Tarquin motioned with a claw.
“Get down! Don’t attract their attention!” The kids heard him and came running, their hands stuffed full of bread crusts.
“Oh, great,” the gull grouched. “I am so sick of stale bread. Every single day of my life, it’s wake up, fly to the beach, fight over crusts. I don’t even like bread!” He sighed and hefted himself into the air.
Weird, Tarquin thought.
Tarquin wandered slowly down the beach. As he passed a tide pool, he heard a spiny sea urchin muttering “I don’t see why I have to polish the sharp edges off the sand. Those humans have shoes; they should keep ‘em on. But, no, they just have to go barefoot. Those crabs sure have it easy, blowing music into shells all day…”
Tarquin was shocked. The urchin thought Tarquin’s job was fun? He wandered over to the water’s edge to think. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who hated his job. Maybe there was a way to make his job more fun, without getting in trouble with King Crab.
Tarquin watched the waves roll in, and thought, and listened hard. He stuck his head underwater and listened some more. He listened harder than he ever had in his life.
“I’ve got it!” he shouted.
The next morning, Tarquin crept down to the beach before all the other crabs were awake. He worked and worked. When Horatio arrived, he was amazed. “Tarquin! Did you do this?”
Every shell on the beach had been polished with kelp until it glowed. When the children arrived, and held them up to listen to the surf… they heard pounding waves, the shift of sand in the water, the swish of a minnow’s tail, and the scuttling of crabs on the ocean floor below. They heard the cry of dolphins, the hush of the sleeping kelp forests, and the hiss of underwater volcanoes spilling their lava onto the sea floor. The sounds were so beautiful that, at the end of the day, all the children tiptoed away clutching the shells like priceless treasures.
“How did you do it?” Horatio whispered. Tarquin just smiled and went back to work, pouring his heart, soul, and the sounds of the entire ocean into every single shell.
