The Magic Minute

 By Harriet May Savitz                         

Second Happening

             The Giant Squid, rising from an incoming wave, offered no excuses as she rushed on to the beach.  Bumping into everyone.  Her dark gray body with red spots darted quickly in front of the Octopus and the Jellyfish.  The Giant Squid, who could change her colors to blend with the environment whenever necessary, faced the Grand Sea Turtle.  Fifty feet in size and quite as intelligent, she spoke to the Turtle as an equal.

            “You have told me there is absolutely no need to use my ink sac as protection tonight,” the Giant Squid stated.  No one who approached the Giant Squid would think she needed such a smoke screen, certainly not since she was a decapod, blessed with eight plus two extremely long arms.  Each arm had rows of round sucking discs.  The Squid used those discs to catch and hold its prey.  “But why should I believe you?” asked the Giant Squid.  She was not one to accept a statement just because it was issued by the Grand Sea Turtle.  The Giant Squid was not one to accept a statement from anyone until she thought it over carefully.  She had her own mind and was quite proud of it.  She knew the upstairs Tenants were difficult and unpredictable.  She also knew they could be cruel when angered.  But she was in no rush to deal with them unless absolutely necessary.

            “The orders came from HIGHER UP,” said the Grand Sea Turtle, expecting the doubting Giant Squid to ask questions.  There were not too many he could talk equally to and he appreciated the squid’s keen, alert mind.  “We are already in the Magic Minute,” the sea Turtle said.  “Don’t you see how different things are?”

            The Giant Squid was accustomed to moving easily in the water.  When he filled the folds in his body walls with liquid and forced it through the muscular tube beneath his head that caused him to move backward, everything proceeded as expected.  But now, his long slender body with two fins at the tail end, was on sand with no water to put in the tube, and yet he moved backward on the beach, just as easily as he had in water.  “And what are we to do with this Magic Minute?” the Giant Squid asked.

            The Sea Turtle realized he was talking to one of the largest most intelligent invertebrates in the world, and as strong and as fast moving as anyone around.  He would not be satisfied with a simple answer.  Just then a large group of Mollusks crowded the beach.  Slugs and Snails, Chitons, and Oysters, Clams and Tusk Shells, and other Mollusks filled the beach until they seemed as plentiful as the grains of sand they rested on.

            “I can’t believe I am meeting with all these awkward looking creatures,” complained the Starfish, who had begged an Octopus to bring her along as a guest.  “They are so common looking.”

            The Starfish, an echinoderm, one of the spiny-skinned animals, was proud of her star-shaped body, formed almost like a star plucked from the sky.  Because she spent most of her life on the sea floor, a Summit Meeting such as this provided the opportunity to get out and enjoy some excitement.  She didn’t intend to miss this Magic Minute and the moment she heard about it, and word certainly got around quickly at the bottom of the sea, she made plans to attend.  But now, moving about on her tube feet and breathing through them, she found it difficult to resist all the clams and oysters nearby.  In the water, she would spend many hours pulling open the shells of the oysters and clams with her tube feet.  Oh, how she wished she could do it now.  What a splendid supper they would make.  But then the Starfish remembered the rules of the Magic Minute.  There would be no enemies, nor anger, nor violence between any of them.   There would just be Deep Thinking and Decision-making about the Tenants.

            The Sea Turtle looked out across the sand.  It appeared covered with Mollusks, the largest group of water animals and the only group officially invited to the Summit Meeting.  Not all the Mollusks could attend, but a good portion of the 100,000 different kinds of Mollusks that made up a major division of the animal kingdom, had arrived.  Tusk Shells, Clams, Oysters, Snails, and Slugs piled up on the beach.  But they were not very happy creatures as they approached the Grand Sea Turtle.  They were a soft-bodied animal without bones, and they needed to keep their bodies moist to stay alive.  One after the other reminded the Sea Turtle of their vulnerability on the beach.   They also reminded the Turtle that the Tenants did not appreciate the Mollusk and often destroyed them.

            “You are protected by HIGHER UP,” the Grand Sea Turtle assured the Mollusks as he spoke to all of them.  It grew quiet on the sand as they listened.  “You come from 600,000,000 years ago, from jelly to shells, when the land masses of the world today were partially covered by shallow seas.  While you are involved in Deep Thinking, you need not worry about your survival.  You will be safe from all the dangers in the world, including each other.”

            The Oyster remained uncomfortable next to the Starfish.  Under ordinary circumstances, which this was not, the Oyster and the Starfish would be enemies with the Oyster serving as food for the Starfish.  The Oyster had no defense but its shell.  As a univalve, his house was actually made up of two shells.  A hinge at one end fastened them together and with its strong muscle, the Oyster could open and close its shell.  But most of the time, it held its shells partly open so that water flowing in and out cold bring oxygen and food and wastes could be carried away.  It would have perished years ago, but for the many eggs it laid, at least 50 million in a season.  So no matter how many Starfish were waiting, there would always be new Oysters.  Only at this moment, the Oyster wished it had something secure to hold on to.  It would have been content to remain fastened to the rock it had found in the water, for the rest of its life, but the Sea Turtle had called this Summit Meeting.  HIGHER UP had given orders.  And now there was this MAGIC MINUTE to use.  There was no sense running away from it any longer, the Oyster concluded.  The tenants were ruining everything they touched and might eventually destroy the output of Oyster eggs laid each season if allowed to behave as they were.

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