Snipsnail
Legacy Name: Snipsnail

He slid into the slipstream with a dexterous swirl of his flippers. It was impossible not to smile with a steady stream of bubbles tickling your underbelly and buoying you to ever-faster speed. He'd rode the currents all his life, getting his first taste of the underwater highway just days after hatching, his journey to adulthood both frightening and exhilarating. He'd been back to his birthing beach three times to watch his own hatchlings take to the water for the first time. The journey never got old.

He'd be coming up on the coastline of a sprawling human habitation in a few hours. This was the spot where his mission began, all those years ago.

This was the beach where he'd come very close to dying.

*****

The plastic can holder was invisible from under the water, its deadly rings just another pocket of bubbles no turtle would suspect of treachery. He'd panicked when the cutting plastic dragged him toward the ocean's top. He could breathe well enough above water but without being able to dive and seek his food, Snipsnail was doomed to slow starvation.

To say nothing of the greedy seagulls always wheeling just over the surface of the water, eager to snatch a bite of anything not big enough to bite back.

Human hands had plucked him up in a dizzying arc, gently tugging and twisting at the awful ring until it popped free. He'd shot away from the boat as soon as he was released...

...yet something drew him back.

He watched the humans over the course of the next few months. They would rescue a bird, a seal pup, even the tiniest hermit crab pinned by the tide pools. The plastic thing had come from humans, they spewed the black death of oil and they dumped nasty chemicals that could take the scales right off a fish.

Yet humans could also be a source of life.

Humans were both the problem and the solution. Snip didn't know what he could do to save the ocean he loved, but he realized it was going to take humans working together with the creatures of the sea.

He recruited the starfish first. They would swarm to the surface whenever children were playing at low tide, making shapes in the water as Snipsnail sliced with his fins to make sparkling rainbow arches. They shaped beautiful coral reefs, fantastic underwater canyons and rainbow fish that glittered in the sun. Then they would simulate human destruction in the shapes of submarines, oil spills and garbage dumps. That year, one bold child proposed a Save the Oceans theme for School Spirit Week. It was a huge success and two beaches formerly marked as unsafe for swimming were cleaned up to the point where the seabirds began to make their nests again on those shores.

Next, Snip called on the octopi to use their many arms to snatch dangerous floaters and fling them back on human boats late at night. Fishermen and yacht owners were astonished to find their polished decks covered in the very garbage they had so carelessly tossed overboard.

A large school of fish volunteered to gather up a bunch of human junk that had floated to the bottom of the ocean and use it to fill those nasty drag nets so popular with humans. A family of dolphins jumped in and swore they would not let even the smallest hermit crab pass that invisible line that separated the safe water from a recent oil spill. Even the sharks wanted in on the action. (Though from a distance.) When they smelled a chemical factory boat trying to slip into open water and dump some vats of toxins to save a few dollars, the flashing of teeth and gnashing of jaws had the corporate-minded fools roaring to the shore with their cargo still securely tied down.

Snip's mission became the talk of the entire ocean, from the frigid arctic shores to the tropical beaches. The whole world was coming together to protect the precious waters that gave life to a whole lot more than fish.

In their own limited way, the humans were noticing too.

More students than ever before were entering the field of marine biology. Nature groups were seeing a record number of donations from coastal cities. The humans even banded together in one small village to bring back an endangered species of tern from the brink of extinction.

Snip enjoyed the praise from fellow ocean dwellers but what really filled him with pride was when he once again made the journey back to the beach of his birth. There were more nests than ever before and three times as many baby turtles flopping their way to the water's edge.

There wasn't so much as a single piece of garbage in sight.

C R E D I T S

profile | Paula
patterns | different shops @ etsy, no attribution required
story | Pureflower