The Valiant Land Crab - Part Three

(When last we saw Percival he had streched himself across a great gulf trying to enter the lighted in-way. Then, just has he had gotten all of himself in, the light went out.)

Percival gasped.

"What? What happened?"

It wasn't that he couldn't see in the dark; his hole in the mangrove was a deep comforting black. It just took several long moments for his eyes to adjust. As he did he stumbled, tumbling completely through the in-way and fell.

As he fell through the dark Percival realized something was falling with him. By the time he hit the bottom his eyes had adjusted and he saw a coiling monster that thrashed about and was attacking him. Upon its head were stiff bristles. It had a hard armless and legless body and a great long coiling tail. The bristles he was sure could pierce a crab that had just molted, so he was glad his shell was nice and hard. But the monster in its noisy gyrations beat its hard body upon him unmercifully, and coiled its tail about him.

Percival fought against it. He snapped at it with his great pincher, pinched at it with his small pincher. He scuttled this way and that. More than once as the buzzing, whirring thing beat against his back he thought his shell would crack.

But he would not give up. In one last effort he snapped at the monster with his great pincher and pinned it down. In that very instant two things happened. The monster died and the light came one.

Percival was blinded. Exhausted as he was he bravely raised his pinchers in defence.

He heard humans!

"They have found me and now they will eat me!" he sobbed.

Suddenly he felt himself being pushed along by something and to his amazement found himself OUT SIDE! And there, in the wind he could smell it, his home, the mangrove swamp. It was just there, over that rise. He was free of the human habitations.

He had gone through a maze. He had battled a monster and won. And he was safe on the other side. Never in his life was Percival so happy and so glad. He scuttled away and by morning was sleeping in his own nice dark, damp hole.

He would never leave home again.

This is the true story of a land crab. Somehow he crawled through a bathroom window at our guest house at night. In the process he tangled with and turned on an electric toothbrush with which he did battle, killing it in a fair fight. The guests were kind enough to sweep the crab out of their room.

We all had a wonderful good laugh over this story of country meets city and country wins.