The blind, cold-blooded scorpion, Lester, kicks back in the heat for a few hours. He can tell when it is day because he can feel the rejuvenating sunlight warming his body. Back from a day of harvesting and sunning, he engages in a quick chat with a few of his buddies. "I've seen things you critters wouldn't believe," he says. "Well, 'seen' is a little strong a word as we're all blind, but you get my point." The wife strolls through with 70 babies on her back. She don't mind.
"Yep," Lester says, "sensed another human today. I try to hold still and blend in to the wood I'm standing on. The block fence we live in is brown so the story goes. When I'm on that thing ain't nobody can see me even in broad daylight - not that I have a concept of that."
"Lester," a sheepish voice from the buddy corp chimes in, "you still sound sore that our species lacks vision. We have shape-shifting bodies, exoskeleton, and the most awesome stinger and it's filled with poison to boot. Yet all you can talk about is how you can't see. What's so great about seeing anyway? Are you a visual varmint? How would you know if you were? So why the constant complaint about sight? I don't get it."
Lester seems more indignant than before and boasts, "...so I evade humans with the best of them even though they can see and I can't. I blend in. Nothing to see here, I'm just a stick and a leaf. Move along little giant human. What's that? I what? Be careful at night? Why? I frickin' glow in black light? You've got to be KIDDING me!"
1 comment:
THIS is your children's book! The beginning is PERFECT! The scorpion character is PERFECT! I love how he talks! The ending needs an actual story -- maybe he discovers the hard way that he glows in the black light. Talk to me about this! I'm SERIOUS!!!
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