The Turtle's Shell

by Noah Fregger


Once upon a time there was a lizard named Turtle. Turtle was very hungry. His favorite food was fish, and Turtle was in the mood for fish right now. The trouble with eating fish was, you had to go in the water. The trouble with going in the water was you might be lunch for Mr. Crocodile.

Turtle made his way carefully toward the pond, Turtle was always careful for he rarely had any place to hide, and when it came to running he was the slowest of all the lizards. As he moved closer he saw a branch leaning against a rock crossing his path. When Turtle got to the branch he started to step over it. First his front left leg then the right. Just at that moment Turtle heard a sound. It sounded like footstep. Turtle froze and slowly (he did everything slowly), he turned his head toward the rock.

There, glaring down at him was Mr. Crocodile licking his lips. As Mr. C moved forward, his eyes locked on T's and he stepped down hard on the other end of the branch.

Turtle's end of the branch launched him into the air. After doing a couple of flips T hit a beehive hanging from a limb. Actually he did more than hit it, he found himself lying in a puddle of honey inside the hive. Although T was surprised, the bees were shocked and before they could begin to attack T made his escape out the new opening in the hive. Unfortunately the hive was 14 feet in the air. Fortunately it was over the pond.

As Turtle fell he heard the bees charging out of the hive in a loud cloud of buzzing. As he hit the water, covered in honey, he saw Mr. C jump into the pond after him. Though Turtle was not a fast runner he was an excellent swimmer and he did his best to avoid the Croc. but after awhile he began to get tired. It was just then that he saw the shell.

At first he didn't recognize it because it was covered with moss that made it look green like all the rocks around it. Turtle dove for the sea shell just in time to see the confused crocodile drift by, searching the sandy grounds of the lake. Finally he gave up.

Turtle swam up to the shore, but when he got there he noticed a heavy weight on his back. The shell had stuck on from all the honey. He began to walk back to his hole when the bees showed up. His first reaction was to run, but he was too slow to out run the bees so he hid under the shell. The bees tried and tried to sting T but they could not penetrate the hard shell and soon gave up.

As Turtle walked on with the shell on his back he realized two things. One, that he hadn't had lunch and two, that this shell was going to come in handy.


The End

Copyright 1995, Noah Fregger. All rights reserved.


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