CHESTER THE SEA-SNAKE

Chester the Sea-Snake: A Story about bad things that are sometimes Good By Jay Agnello Chester was a sea-snake in the Pee-Koo Lagoon. His day started out in a way most sea-snakes try to avoid. He was awakened by a terrible frenzy and great swirling of the sand beneath him, followed by stinging lashes from long cords of kelp. He had hardly a chance to snake away when a monstrous current had drawn him out and around a tall winding coral, whipped him about in loud rumbling froth and bubbles, and ripped him up to the surface of the Lagoon where he breeched and twirled in the air for a spell before plopping back into the ocean. That was the strangest and far most unnerving sensation to his awakening because, you see, snakes don’t fly. Emerging from the sandy floor of the lagoon, far below, a great shadow! It carved its way twisting upward, then there were two of them, and then three. Chester was now popping about the surface of the ocean, his soft tubular underbelly and spear-shaped tail were being shot by schools of tiny krill, sardines, sea-guppies and other fleeing critters frantically bursting out from the ocean, as if they had some way of flying into the clouds high above to get away. Chester found some ability to snake his body across the flurry and was fortunate to find a very narrow and smooth rolling wave where he skillfully zipped across the crest of it, a reptilian bolt of lightning. Another second, and he would have been engulfed in the jaws of a massive humpback whale rising from the waters. Three goliaths were now blocking out the sun, their mouths full of seawater and krill. Seagulls were now a noisy chaotic and cyclonic flapping dance, screeching as they dived for whatever shrimp and flittering fish spilled from the pouring mouths of the humpbacks. Chester continued away from the towering whales. The black warty beasts had reached their height of the breech. They began to come back down into the water pushing powerful foamy walls, twisted kelp, and waves of bright green ocean water out in all directions. One of the great rolling ripples in the water picked Chester up, and once again, he was at the mercy of a strong hydraulic ride. As the wave carried him toward the nearby beach, the exhausted snake began a reserved slither out to a cascade of boulders hugging the shore. He was splashed up onto the wide surface of a monolith where he coiled for a moment to catch his breath. But of course, too much time on the marine boulders made a sea-snake subject to relentless seagulls, pecking pelicans, and stealthy sea-hawks, so after blinking some of the salt-water from his eyes, and smelling the air with his forked flickering tongue, he descended down into the shallow lagoon waters once more, and made his way to the shore. On good days, there was often a small rodent he could catch in the brush and growth that grew on the edge of the lagoon rim where he was about to surface. Though he had very little strength, a good meal and a nap would serve greatly to him after this forceful encounter. The brush was even a cool and a well-hidden place for a sea-snake to sleep, so that is what he set out to do. Once he was at the root of the brush and palms, he began to detect movement already beyond stalks of tall grass. Oh, how an effortless hunt would make up for this terrible morning. He began to slither and hunt with more caution now, winding back and forth with more quiet and calculated dynamics. The sounds of the brush became much louder, in fact, they began to sound nothing at all like rodents or chickadees, as he had hoped. Once Chester got his tongue up out of the water, he could sense the fragrance of a more precarious animal that was impossible to mistake. That smell was humans. He would have to make his way up one of the younger palm trees quickly for safety, or race back across the lengthy shallow to the boulder cascades, a place where a human could stomp out at about eight paces and club a sea-snake to death without too much trouble. Humans were notoriously exceptional at killing any creature that lived in the about the islands or within the lagoon. Taking an unprovoked risk was never a good idea. Up the tree Chester went, until he was a good seven-feet above the humans now, wrapped around a swaying stalk of palm leaf. They had a camp, four of them. They were breaking up dry bark and brush and igniting the kindling that had some rich pungent oils about it. The toiling men had captured and killed two scaly oversized marine iguanas and were preparing to cook them on the flames. One of the men fanned the flames with a dry palm leaf that gave ample oxygen to the sandpit beneath the burning bark, but his moves were so ambitious that the leaf itself caught on fire. One of the men howled in a shocking pitch to the sight, and another shouted brute-like amd tyrannical. The man holding the fire panicked, waving the leaf more to put out the flame but this sent burning palm embers up into the trees above and the edge of the lagoon was now crackling with smoke and embers and a terrible fire was inevitably in the works A dry shredded batch of palm bark, where Chester had coiled up comfortable was now slowly glowing red at the tips, and not long the trunk of the palm began to smoke and burn. Chester fell out of the palm and onto the brute’s harry shoulder. He yelped almost feminine noticing Chester on his arm, shrieking in his language, “HELP, HELP ME! SNAKE….FIRE SNAKE…SNAKE!” The spastic ogre hurled the equally frightened sea-snake up the cobbled bank into more brush that was beginning to smoke and crackle and hiss with fire. Chester zipped up the bank and over into an estuary to escape the men and the fire. Behind him the flames of the beach brush and palms were astounding, and the entire island was in great peril. As he slithered faster away, he was suddenly seeing the ground become distant. It was so ferociously quick, but now he realized he was in the air. His serpent body was now in the claws and grip of a great gold and white sea-hawk. The fowl let out one of its deafening screeches and this was by far the very last predicament a sea-snake wanted to find himself in. That moment he twirled through the air earlier in the day seemed to feel like forever, but this… this was a helpless and mortifying height and soar up, and up, and up knowing that at the end of this sky journey he would be ripped to pieces alive by a beak, most likely three chicks as well. Chester could see the island fire sprawling quickly across the crescent of the lagoon below, as the perfect ocean breezes drifted in to carry and fuel the marching flames across the hills. Whatever creatures were down there now had no hope for survival, so Chester’s time of death, at hand, was not the most lonely one. The flight of the sea-hawk had now taken them to the edge of the island and lagoon and it was apparent that the sea-hawk had a nest on the next atoll which was a volcano. They were now bouncing at the rhythm of the sea-hawks wings, but up over a very smooth and shallow aqua-blue water below between the channel of the islands. Chester imagined being in that cool bright water and even nestling up in the white rippling sand beneath it. Another piercing screech from the hawk shook the air. Chester got a good look at the tail end of the bird from where his head dangled. It seemed like a very easy and plump target to strike if he could get the momentum. He looked one more time at the refreshing waters below, slithered his tongue a bit to test his surrounding, and then struck. It was a perfect piece of sea-hawk rump to clamp onto with his fangs and jaws, and the hawk immediately tumbled over in the air, writhing in pain. Now Chester was able to wrap his serpent body around the hawk’s torso, legs and neck, and the flapping of the wings seized. They plummeted together from the sky like a heavy sack of fruit, a stream of large and tiny black feathers trailing them like the tail of a comet. The screeches of the hawk were now agonizing before they smacked into the ocean with great impact. Chester kept his squeeze around the fowl. The hawk was only able to free one wing that flapped with futile effort, tragically in the waters. With its head submerged, it did not take long for the hawk to drown and become lifeless in the water. Chester slowly released his serpent body from the dead creature and his body drifted apart from it, just as the jaws of a small lemon shark crashed out of the water, and chomped down on the dead hawk, carrying it beneath the aqua blue channel. Chester drifted peacefully to the white sand below where he nestled under its rippling blanket to hide and warm up his skin. Chester had an awful day, where a sequence of seemingly bad forces of nature ironically saved his life. A story about bad things that are sometimes good.