Estuary+Fiction

Sunny A.

Silently, Crocky the Saltwater Crocodile sneaks up on his prey, the graceful Great Blue Heron. In one swift fluid motion, before it had a chance escape, Crocky had clamped his mouth down on the bird. Within moments, the Great Blue Heron was dead. Later that day, Izzy the Egyptian Plover came for her daily meal searching for food inside Crocky’s giant mouth, in between his dagger sharp teeth. After the Izzy was full, a small mullet swimming in the water caught her eye. I should introduce myself to him, she thought. So Izzy swooped down toward the water, but the mullet fish named Stripes was startled by the bird that was diving down towards him, so Stripes swam down, down to the bottom of the estuary where he hid in a thick clump of green sea grass. A manatee swims lazily over and starts to munch on Stripes’ hiding spot. Stripes the fish frantically popped out of the sea grass and pleaded to the manatee, whose name was Sammy to help him. But Sammy was too busy chomping away that he did not hear Stripes’ helpless pleas. Meanwhile, Izzy was searching above the water for Stripes with no luck. Stripes continued to yell to get the manatees attention. “Manatee, manatee, help me, help me!” Stripes cried. Then Sammy looked down and sees the little fish. Stripes told Sammy that a bird is trying to eat him. Sammy answered, “ I know that bird, let me go talk to her for you.” With that, the manatee swam to the surface and called for Izzy the bird. Izzy flied over and landed on a nearby floating log. “ Have you seen a small mullet swim by?” asked Izzy. Sammy the manatee replied, “ Don’t eat him, he’s my new friend!” Izzy laughed and chirped,” Ha! I don’t eat fish, I was just going to introduce myself. Could you bring him to the surface for me?” Sammy went down under the water to get Stripes who was still kind of nervous and brought him up to the surface where he told him that it had been a misunderstanding. Izzy apologized to Stripes the fish. She said, “ I don’t eat fish anyways, especially fish with Ich.” From that day on, they became best friends, and both lived a long and happy life. But Stripes the fish eventually died of the parasite disease, Ich.

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