Laura bent down to pick up one half of a shiny clam shell.
“I’ve never seen so much seaweed on land before,” she exclaimed. “There are
shells, bottles, cork floats and driftwood everywhere. I feel as if I’m on a
treasure hunt.”
“A smelly treasure hunt,” Kevin commented. He wrinkled his
nose. “There must be some dead fish up ahead.”
“Let’s climb over the rocks on the point and check out the
cove,” Laura suggested. “Maybe we’ll find out where the smell is coming from.”
Kevin and Laura picked their way around the objects on the
beach. Wet sand crunched beneath their shoes. Beside them the blue-green ocean
lapped gently at the shore as the tide continued to go out. Except for the mess
on the beach, no one would have guessed that a huge summer storm had blown in
and out just the night before.
They climbed carefully over the rocks and rounded the bend
into the hidden cove.
Suddenly Laura stopped. “I can’t believe it!”
“No wonder!” Kevin added. “Dead fish. Thousands of them!”
“Those aren’t fish,” Laura said. “They’re sea stars! And,
there are so many of them. They must have washed up on shore during the storm.
Without water, they’ll all die!”
Seeing the stranded sea stars up close was even worse than
seeing them from far away. Up close, their sunbaked bodies were already
beginning to dry up as they struggled to reach the ocean. Most of them were
flung so far up on the beach that even a very high tide wouldn’t reach them.
“This is awful!” Laura said. “I wish we could save them. I
wish we had a tractor or a snowplow or something.”
Kevin pointed up ahead. “Who is that up there?” he asked.
“Do you see a boy near the far side of the cove?”
Laura squinted against the glare of the sun. “I see him. But
what’s he doing? He keeps running back and forth.”
“Maybe he’s exercising,” Kevin said. “I’m going to go find
out.”
They ran down the beach, taking care not to crush any of the
unfortunate animals stuck high above the water line.
“Hi!” Laura called as they approached the boy. “What are you
doing?”
The boy bent to pick up a handful of sea stars and ran to
the ocean’s edge. He placed them softly in a tide pool and ran back to the mass
of stranded stars.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked, pausing only a
second before reaching for another sea star and carrying it to the ocean’s
edge. “I’m saving them.”
Laura and Kevin looked at each other. They watched as the
boy ran back and forth, intent on his purpose. Over and over he carried
armloads of sea stars to the tide pools and deposited them safely in the
shallow water.
“What you’re doing seems kind of useless,” Kevin finally
said. “There’s no way that you can save them all.”
“Look at how many there are,” Laura added, gesturing up and
down the beach.
The beach was littered in both directions with sea stars.
The little boy knelt in the only clear patch of sand, the result of his frantic
work. He picked up a five-legged star and stood up. He turned it over in his
hand and watched its tiny tentacles wave in the air. The mouth hole in the
center opened and closed, searching for water.
The boy smiled.
“I know I can’t save them all,” he said. “But I can make a
difference in the life of this one. This one depends on me.”
Kevin reached down and picked up another sand-encrusted sea
star. “If I put this one back in the water, it will live.”
“This one will raise a family and help replace some of the
sea stars that have died because of the storm,” Laura said as she picked up one
of her own.
The boy smiled again. “I know I’m only one person, but I can
help in a small way.”
“I guess that even small contributions make a difference,”
Kevin said.
“There are a lot of sea stars to save,” the boy said. “I can
only save a few. But, with your help, we could save a lot more.”
“Then what are we waiting for,” Kevin asked, scooping up as
many sea stars as he could carry. “Let’s get to work.”
(by Cindy Savage, ‘Brilliant Star, September-October 1994’)
