Molly

Molly the mollusc was wandering over the sea bed, as molluscs do, grazing here and there on any titbits she could find, when she came across something very strange.

Very strange indeed.

It was a cave. Not the usual underground cave, but an above ground cave, just lying there on the top of the sand. Molly couldn't believe it herself to start with, I mean, how on earth can you have an above ground cave? But sure enough, there it was ... a dark cavernous hole sitting on the sea bed.

The cave didn't just have the usual dark inside, it also had a brightly coloured outside. A sort of multi-coloured leaf thing that seemed to wrap all the way round the cave, that wasn't actually a leaf, which Molly found out when she bit a piece of it. Not like any leaf she'd ever tasted before anyway.

In fact, now that she had got over her first surprise, she realised that there were quite a number of altogether peculiar tastes around this cave.

Some of them not very pleasant at all.

Like all molluscs, Molly was very curious, even to the point of being rude and nosy, and she was wondering, quietly to herself, just what sort of animal might live in this cave. It did still have to be called a cave, because Molly knew for sure it wasn't a shell. Not because she'd met every kind of shell-living creature there is, oh no, but because all shells do taste pretty much the same - and this one definitely tasted different. Not nice either.

If the cave was the same shape on the inside as it was on the outside she really couldn't possibly imagine who might use it as a home. The cave was round and tubular, with the end closed off absolutely flat. Not a comfortable sort of shape to live in at all. Even hermit crabs wouldn't use it, and anyway, it was far too big for the ones she knew.

She was about to take a peek inside, for she was sure it was empty, when she noticed the teeth!

All around the entrance were some very jaggy looking fangs. She jumped back in surprise, and landed smack on top of even more teeth!

One of them hooked over the edge of her shell, and she had an awful time trying to get away from it, all the while dreading the moment which must surely come when the jaws of this strange cave monster would snap shut and bring to a swift end the life and times of Molly mollusc.

As it was, nothing happened, although Molly did have a little tear in her mantle, and quite a few scratches on her outer shell. Her heart was beating quite a bit faster too, though she knew, now that the panic was over, that she'd scraped herself much worse than this as a youngling when playing tag amongst the corals.

Quite a bit of sand and silt had been disturbed during her struggles, and Molly was about to move to cleaner water when she noticed an unusual glint flashing through the murk. It was, in fact, the lower jaw of the cave beast, which had previously been covered up, but it caught the light very prettily, so Molly decided to wait a while and see what happened next.

Once the water had cleared properly, Molly could see that the jaw was bent quite a way away from the cave entrance, or mouth, or whatever it was, but it just so happened that it was reflecting the dancing sunlight coming from the surface straight into the cave. Molly now was torn between two desires. One to get away from this funny tasting and dangerous beast; and the other to see if it really was a cave that could be explored ...

Of course, curiosity won, and Molly shuffled a little closer so that she could peer inside. And here she saw something even more strange!

Far back, in the depths of the cave was a funny red jelly looking sort of stuff, and sitting on it, and even in it were the strangest eggs she'd ever seen. A very pale sort of orange colour they were, sort of like short fat rods with rounded ends. There were even a few translucent egg cases embedded in the red goo too. In fact, one of them had drifted very close to the door...

Molly flapped the two halves of her shell together and sent a small swirling current of water into the cave entrance, trying to move the egg case a bit closer to her, because she most certainly was not going anywhere near those teeth again! Alternately blowing and sucking she finally managed to get the case out of the cave, looking forward now to a nice new titbit, because egg cases always made good eating.

At her first taste of it though she promptly spat it out in disgust. It wasn't an egg case at all! It was a plant thing! All chewy and horrible, and the bits of the red goo that were still on it were even worse. Molly felt decidedly ill. It took a lot of swilling and spitting to get rid of the taste. Yeuch!

All in all, it hadn't been a very good day what with one thing or another.

But then, if you'd bumped into an old baked bean tin on the sea bed yourself, you wouldn't have been very pleased either!