one crabby patty please

once there was a little hermit crab... and a little child (who incidentally is of little consequence)

anyway. the little hermit crab was brought up to believe that everything in the world outside his rock pool was terribly scary - the world was full of seagulls which would eat him... so he stayed in his little rock pool, day after day after day - comfortable, content.


one day the little child picked up the little hermit crab - "mommy look what i found" - "put it back dear, don't kill the poor thing" - but the child didn't put the little hermit crab back into the right pool.

the little hermit crab felt it immediately... the water was colder, the currents were different, the air was strange.. and he was terrified. so he never ventured out of his shell... maybe a leg or two... or a feeler... or an eye was out at any one time - but he never really dared to come out.


but... the little hermit crab finally outgrew its shell and needed to emerge to get a new one.

tentatively. he stuck a feeler... then two... a leg.. then another and another. then suddenly as he was scuttling to his new house he realised - that the rock pool he was now in was not all that much different from the one he grew up in. sure - the waves felt colder, the air was different, but it was very much the same.

after all. he was still living on that same Solid Rock.