Portfolio: The Crab and His Friends

Crater Lake - Oregon

There once was a giant Crab that lived in the deep waters of Crater Lake in Oregon. He was a sad Crab but everyone only saw him as dangerous and mean.  He didn’t understand why everyone hated him without giving him the chance.  Typically what happened when he tried to meet new friends was he would show his face and anyone that saw him would be fearful of his size. This Crab was so big he was similar to the size of a fairly big truck. Shortly after one of the animals would panic, they would end up drowning and while he was trying to save them everyone thought he was attacking and eating them and so, over time, they built up this hatred towards him. Every day for years he tried to make friends and all the other animals still assumed he was trying to hurt them until he thought of a new way to show them he was their friend. He would sneak up on them and then they would have to listen to him. So, instead of showing his face he would swim deep under the water until he got to them and he would tap them on the foot and when he did that he realized he got the same ugly response from them. He was so hurt and sad that he gave up and decided to live alone forever in his lake.

One morning a young Elephant slowly wobbled down to the lake with his mother and herd. This was his first time down to the lake and he was so excited. When he got there his mother sat him down and gave him the long lecture on how to be safe around the water and to look out for the Crab. "The key, sweetheart is to stay in between the Elephants on guard. If you stray past them it will be hard for anyone to save you from the giant Crab that lurks in the deep waters."
 The Elephant listened impatiently while dreaming of how cold the fresh water would feel on his back. He just kept repeating, "Yes mother." Finally, his mother told him to go have fun. He noticed the big elephants stood guard watching for the rest of the pack as he ran into the water without a care in the world. As he ran he noticed the Crab far away to the west just sitting and watching everyone as they played and had a blast. He decided he was going to walk over and say hi, even though his mother gave him strict instructions not to. He slowly started walking that direction, making sure his mom did not see him slip away.

He carefully walked up to the Crab and with a brave voice said, “Hello, Mr. Crab! My name is Erik the Elephant and I wanted to know if you wanted to play with me.”

The Crab slowly turned around and with tears in his eyes said, “Are you sure you want to play with me? No one really likes me and I don’t want to cause problems.”

The Elephant laughed and said, “Of course we want you! Come on!” From that moment on not only were the Elephant and the Crab the best of friends, but also everyone respected the Crab and realized that he was not mean. The Crab got to explain himself and apologized for all of the problems that he had caused in the past. The Crab was finally able to go to bed that night knowing he had friends and was no longer alone in this world.

Authors Note's: The original piece that gave me the idea for this piece was very similar but also very opposite. It showed the crab as a mean and harmful crab that killed the elephants until the elephants finally stood up for each other and killed the crab. The elephants ended up jumping on the crab's shell and killed him so that he could do no more harm. I really enjoyed this piece because I took it from the crab actually being a jerk and really hurting everyone in sight to being a nice crab and not having any friends. By having the roles reversed we were able to see a unique twist to the classic story that is told in India and other countries. It was more difficult than I thought it would be at first because I wanted to keep the general idea of the story. I chose to still have animals die but instead of him drowning and eating them you can see he was trying to be nice and his actions were just misinterpreted. I think the moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover and always accept people for who they are. You never know when you are going to run across a crab in your life that could end up being your best friend. I am really enjoying writing children’s stories because I never get to be creative with my writing. I am always writing research or informational papers and so this option has been really fun. The image had not a ton of thought behind it but I thought it kind of fit just because it showed a happy crab with some friends with him.  

Bibliography: The Giant Crab and Other Tales From India; William Henry Dunham Rouse

Crab and His Friends