The boy held the shell in his hand: a tiny thing, like a miniature spiral spire studded with jewels. He admired its glint in the morning sunlight. 'Look, Chryssa! This one is perfect.'

The girl took it and turned it over carefully, checking to see that it was empty of passengers. 'That's a good one, Luca. You can add it to the others.' Lucas happily took it to the bucket and set it down among the straw. The children were amassing quite a collection – everything from pretty scallops to convoluted whorls whose labyrinths had to be inspected carefully to make sure the former inhabitants were no longer in residence.

Chryssa had thought of this activity. Chryssa thought of the best games. Argyros, Stephanos, and Lucas were helping her with the beach collection. It was going to turn into decorated boxes, gifts for mothers and aunts and sisters. Not one of the children thought about what they were doing as a 'learning activity'. None of them realised that they were 'getting exercise'. And nobody realised that Chryssa was an 'unpaid babysitter'. They were just enjoying the day.

None of them paid the slightest attention to the black-headed gull that flew back and forth along their stretch of the beach. Probably looking for something to eat. Or maybe it was like them, merely enjoying the beautiful day.

'Ouch!' Stephanos's shell had turned out to be very much inhabited. 'That hurts! And he won't let go!' He was trying to be brave, but things hurt more when you're eight.

Chryssa trudged over to him, bare toes curling in warm sand. 'Here, don't move.' She gently tapped the protruding claws: the creature stopped pinching the boy's finger and moved down his outstretched hand and onto the sand. The other boys joined them to watch as the hermit crab sidled along the beach.

'Can we follow him?' asked Argyros, curious.

Chryssa nodded. 'Yes, but don't anybody get in his way or try to pick him up again. Let's see where he goes.'

Toting his rented house, the hermit crab sidled his way across the sand. He was a curious sight, to be sure. But perhaps even more curious to an observer – perhaps an aerial observer, like the still-present seagull – would have been the four young naturalists, creeping their way behind him at a respectable distance. Why would they do this, anyway? What secret could they possibly uncover?

The hermit crab-walked its way along the beach for perhaps a quarter-mile, his fans in faithful pursuit. Then, just as Argyros was beginning to think this was hot work, and perhaps a little futile and boring, they spied a curious thing: a small congregation of hermit crabs. A crab convention, if you will, on the beach.

'Look, Chryssa!' said Lucas. 'They're lining up!'

As, indeed, they were. The children watched as 'their' hermit crab joined the queue of crabs. They squatted on their haunches – the kids, that is, not the crabs, who were all, of course, carrying their disparate shell-houses on their backs. The crabs lined up in order, from the largest to the smallest.

'They look like the street where our shop is, sort of,' noticed Stephanos.

And then the crabs did the most curious thing the children had ever seen.

The biggest crab started it. He – they called them all 'he' because they didn't know how to tell male from female, and neither do you, so stop fussing – selected a large shell from the ones lying around. He inspected it carefully. Apparently, the new shell conformed to the hermit crab building code, because now, the crab climbed out of its shell and into the new, larger one.

'Ooh,' breathed all the children.

'Why?' whispered Stephanos, as if the crabs could hear him and be disturbed.

'I know that one,' said Lucas the apprentice sponge-diver. 'When they grow, they need a bigger house.'

Watching a hermit crab swap houses was surprising enough. But what happened next took even more of their breath away.

Once the biggest crab had discarded his old house, the next-biggest one came out of his temporary dwelling, as well – and slipped straight into the one recently abandoned by the larger crab. And once he did, the next crab in the queue moved over into the leftover house of the second-largest crab, and. . .

And so on: a queue full of simultaneously relocating hermit crabs. Chryssa would have clapped her hands at the elegance of this solution to a housing shortage, but she didn't want to startle the crabs. So she stuck her fist in her mouth to keep from saying anything.

From big to little, they switched shells. One crab was left without a suitable shell.

'Oh, no!' said Argyros. 'What will he do? He has no house.'

But the situation didn't last long. The homeless crab sidled around the beach and soon found a shell of the right size to move into. The rehousing manoeuvre complete, the hermit crabs ambled off about their business, leaving four astonished natural philosophers to mull over their experience¹.

The kids sat around after their swim, eating the lunch Chryssa had thoughtfully packed while they dried themselves in the sun. They studied the sea and the sky. They thought thoughts.

'I wonder if grownups ever stop to think how smart animals are?' mused Stephanos.

'What do you mean?' asked Argyros.

'Animals know lots of things. Like where to go to find food. Like how to swim, or fly. Like. . . '

'Like when to organise a house-swap!' put in Lucas. They all laughed.

'Yeah, like that.'

The kids agreed that animals were plenty smart, and people could learn from them.

'Why aren't people as smart as animals?' Argyros wanted to know. Chryssa looked at him quizzically. He looked at her. 'How many teeth do you have?'

She counted, running her tongue over her teeth. 'Nineteen. I lost one and it hasn't grown back yet. You?'

'Eighteen I think grownups have more. We'll have to ask them.'

'They'll laugh,' warned Chryssa. 'But why do you ask?'

'Because Ermione and Uncle Radu were reading some guy called Aristotle. And he said men had more teeth than women. And I'll bet. . . '

'He never counted!' said Stephanos and Lucas together. The children laughed because they knew grownups.

Chryssa thought. 'I'll bet if he asked his wife to count her teeth, she'd have hit him.' More laughter.

'Anyway,' she said, 'Animals don't worry about counting teeth. People do stuff like that. And then they make up silly stories and pretend they're wise. I think it's better to look and learn.' There was general agreement on this point. Chryssa passed out snack cakes. A bottle of good spring water was circulated.

Lucas, who had good sea eyes, pointed to something bobbing on the water, out in the distance. 'Look! There's a seal, watching us. I wonder what he's thinking?'

'No use wondering what that seal is thinking,' replied Chryssa carelessly. 'That's Uncle Demetrius. He's been watching us all morning.'

'But where's Uncle Radu, then?'

She pointed up. 'See that noisy bird?' she broke off part of her cake and held it up. The black-headed gull swooped down and took the morsel from her hand, flying away.

'Do they do that a lot?' Stephanos wanted to know.

Chryssa nodded. 'Be careful around the cats if you have any secrets. They're likely to be anywhere.' The kids nodded philosophically.

Then the talk changed to other things. Argyros told the others about their trip to Ancona, and Lucas explained how to dive for sponges, and then Stephanos showed them a small carving he'd made. Chryssa packed up the lunch things and sang them a song as they all dozed gently on the sand. The quiet surf made a pleasant accompaniment.

While you live, shine! Never grieve,

For a little, life exists, time takes its toll.

DG

09.09.24 Front Page

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