"You're going to like the beach, Pauly," Pippa told her friend as they sat in the car, riding along the road. "You've never seen so much sand in your life!"
"Jeffy has a sandbox," Pauly replied. "There's enough sand in it for him to dig holes and fill his pail. Sometimes he takes me to his sandbox and lets me watch him play." Pauly thought Jeffy's sandbox had an awful lot of sand. How could the beach have more? He didn't want to disagree with Pippa, though, until he had seen how much sand there was at the beach.
Pippa just smiled to herself. The Writer's backyard had a sandbox, too. The Writer's grandchildren liked to play in it. Pippa played in it too and knew that the amount of sand in the sandbox was very small when compared with the sand on the beach. She would just let Pauly see for himself.
After a pleasant ride, The Writer parked the car and helped the two little dolls get out. She told them she would sit in the shade near the small parking lot where the beach started. She could keep an eye on them. She said that they should have a good time. She would call them when it was time to go home. The two little dolls looked at the beach. It was big. It was very big!
The two dolls took the bucket and the ball they had brought with them, and their bottle of water, in case one of them got thirsty.
"You were right, Pippa!" Pauly exclaimed as the two dolls stood and looked at the beach. This is a lot, a very lot, of sand! This is way more than Jeffy has in his sandbox."
"If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year, do you suppose," the Walrus said, "that they could get it clear?" Pippa thought to herself. She remembered that from her favorite book, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It is a very big book. It's two books in one, in fact, but she has read the whole thing several times.
They carried the bucket and other things down to a place where some of the sand was still damp from the high tide, but some sand right next to it was nice and dry to sit on. They sat down there in the warm, dry sand. There were gusts of wind, but not enough to make it difficult to stand. There were human people walking on the beach. They didn't fall over, either, but the wind made their clothes move about.
"What's that stuff out there?" Pauly asked, pointing out past where the sand was very damp. Something was moving back and forth.
"That's the ocean," Pippa said. She had wondered about it, too, the first time. "It's water. A lot of it."
"What's all the white stuff on top?" Pauly wanted to know.
"I asked Mandy about that," Pippa said. "The water turns white when the waves get close to the shore, and they get too tall to stand up. The tops of the waves fall over, and all the sloshing makes bubbles. The bubbles make the water look white. I think it's pretty."
Pauly thought it was pretty, too, and he liked hearing the whooshing sound that came and went.
There were some birds on the shore, walking around.
"Those things look like birds," Pauly said, "but I haven't seen any like that before."
"Those birds are called gulls," Pippa told Pauly. They live mostly on or near the ocean. Mandy told me about them.They're finding something to eat in the sand."
"Mandy said that the ones that are smaller and splotchy grey-and-brown are young ones," Pippa explained as they watched the birds. "The grownup ones are white all over except their wings."
The gulls were far away. Pippa remembered the photo Mandy had shown her at that time. She wanted to show it to Pauly. She concentrated very hard on the photo of the gull in her memory to show it to Pauly. She hadn't thought to bring a telescope or binoculars, which help you see things that are far away. Pauly saw the gull in his head, and nodded solemnly.
The gull in Pippa's head was standing on a rock, but Pauly didn't see any rocks on the beach. He guessed that this gull was like the ones on the beach but not actually one of them. Maybe this gull lived far away.
Pippa and Pauly played in the sand for a while. They tried to make the sand squish through their toes, but that didn't work, because their little toes are all stuck together. They rolled the ball back and forth on the sand. They found out that it rolled better on the sand that was damp than on the dry sand.
Then Pauly dug into the sand with his fingers. (At least most of his fingers aren't stuck together!) It was fun to feel the sand. He remembered it from Jeffy's sandbox.
Then he remembered something Jeffy had done in the sandbox. Pauly filled the pail with sand that was slightly camp. Then he got Pippa to help him turn it over, so the sand came out again, but it didn't spill all over; it stayed in one place, shaped like the pail. He patted the top smooth.
"It looks like a table," Pippa said, as Pauly patted the top.
"Yes," Pauly agreed. "We can use it like a table."
He put their water bottle on it, and they sat on each side of it, like vacationers at a beach-front hotel. They watched the birds and the human people walking on the beach. No human people were swimming, because the wind made the water too rough. It would be dangerous and not fun.
After a while they heard The Writer calling them, and they knew it was time to go. Pippa picked up the pail. She was a little sad to have to leave, but she knew the fun time they had had would stay in her mind for a long time. She gazed at the ocean, so she could remember it.
"Here," Pauly said, "Let me help carry the pail."
Pippa was happy to let Pauly help. The two dolls carried the pail between them back up the beach toward The Writer. Suddenly, Pauly stopped. This made Pippa stop, too. He looked down and saw something in the sand. "Oh, look at this!" he exclaimed. What a funny thing it was!
"Let's ask the Writer what it is," Pippa suggested. So they did. They had trouble telling her what it looked like, and she can't see pictures in their heads, so she came back to that spot with them and looked at it. She told them it was an empty crab carapace (KA-ra-pace). She took a photo with her phone and suggested maybe Mandy could tell them what kind it was.
They talked all the way home about the fun they had had and the things they had seen at the beach.
Home at last, the two dolls washed the sand off of their feet in the bathroom sink and dried them off with a towel.
Then they went to find Mandy. She was in the workroom, looking at the tablet.
She smiled when they came in. "Hi!" she said. "Before you left the beach, The Writer sent me a text with the photo of the crab carapace you found in the sand. I've been looking, and I think I've found the right kind of crab. It's hard to tell for sure, because there are two kinds of crab that look a like this."
"We would need to have the legs to know for sure." Mandy explained. "We just have the carapace. If we had the underside or the legs, we could be certain." She showed them the photo on the computer. "This is the one I think it is. It's called a Pacific Rock Crab."
Pippa and Pauly looked at the photo.
Then Mandy found another photo on the computer. "Here's our crab in the water where it lives."
"It looks sort of like a spider," Pippa said.
"Yes," Mandy agreed.
"Crabs and other sea animals like this are related to spiders," Mandy told them. They don't have a skeleton on the inside like human people. They have an exoskeleton (EX-o-skel-eh-tun) instead."
"An exoskeleton is what it's called when it's on the outside." Mandy explained. "A skeleton is the framework for all their muscles, so their bodies can move around." Mandy demonstrated by moving her arms and legs up and down a bit.
"What happened to the rest of it?" Pauly asked. "I mean, what we found didn't have legs or any of these other parts. It was just a piece of it."
"Yes," Mandy agreed. "The carapace is just the part that covers the top of the crab. As to what happened to the rest of it, it was probably eaten by a gull or some other creature. They don't eat the shell, just what's inside. The shells from the legs and underside were probably in the sand somewhere else or still in the water."
"Do we have an exoskeleton" Pippa wanted to know, "or do we have a regular skeleton, since we look like human people."
Mandy had to think. "Well," she said, since we are supposed to represent real human people, I would say that we have a pretend skeleton inside, but our vinyl is made to be like an exoskeleton. It's hard and on the outside, and it lets us move around."
The dolls all had to think about that.
An exoskeleton with air and connectors inside. Interesting.
Mandy: Götz Happy Kidz Katie 2015
"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.
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