Willowmina thought about this, and replied, “Hmmm. It sounds like you’ve had some trouble at home. Why don’t you tell us about it.”
The crab, now joined by a baker’s dozen of his fellow crustaceans alongside him, then burst into sonnet.
“Oh once we were happy and free
And selfish in our shell-fish-ness
Thinking only of the surf and sea
And sands of golden grainy bliss
But strange pink monkeys from the trees
Grew smart and lost their hairs
Then they came to our golden shores
And sat tanning in their chairs
Plastic umbrellas darkened our skies
Children all building castles
Flip-flops trampling our soft pink heads
A beach of endless hassles
And no salvation in salt water is found
Just sporting monkeys floating around
On boards that skate upon the surf
Crushing us for what it’s worth
We will not go back on this or any day
In these bleak waters we shall decay
And fall into the flapping maw
Of tentacled squid with giant jaw”
–”Pink monkeys? I’ve only seen brown ones,” mused Slub Glub, once the chorus of crabs had completed their song of sorrow.
“Oh wait,” Seamort chimed in. “Hairless pink monkeys? They must mean human beings.”
“Human beings? What are those?” Willowmina inquired.
“They were children of the monkeys, but then they lost their hair and started wearing sandals and they do like to lounge around on beaches cooking in the sun, so I could see how that would get in the crabs’ way.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I read books,” Seamort replied mysteriously, and then the frenzy came over him again and he began diving after the crabs, who made no effort to get away as he swallowed them whole.
Willowmina grabbed Slub Glub by his knobby forehead and pulled him away from the tsunami of Seamort’s thrashings as he fed. “You know what we have to do,” she said to him.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve got to find these human beings and keep them from driving these crabs into deep water.”
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Get the graphic novel from Eraserhead Press.
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb