PUFFY AND ME
by Ezra Chambers
My family and I settled into the plane heading off to Tahiti. We were organized, the suit cases were packed, and the kids were under control. It was a wonderful start. Sean, Tom, and Jim were fast asleep on my lap. Ten hours later, I heard a bumping and screeching noise. My children did not wake up though. I looked out my window and saw that we landed.
“Grunt, grunt,” Jim groaned awake, “Sniff, sniff,” Tom sniffed as he woke up. “Auuhh!” Sean yawned as he blinked awake. “It's so HOT!” but before I could shush Jim, the pilot made an announcement, “Noussaterreesonsss...” “WHAT?!” asked Jim, “language is he sprrreken'?” “I think he said we've landed,” I replied as we got out of the plane and jumped into a cab.
“The Moorings base please,” said my wife.
“What is that?” asked Tom. “It’ s where we get our sailboat,” I said, as we drove past beautiful vanilla plants and palm trees, in time to meet the head of the base.
"Hi, I'm Captain Konfidents and you are…?”
“We're Paul and Julie and these are my three good boys.”
After the captain gave us our charts, we boarded our sailboat and steered off shore. It was like a dream come true. We spotted a beautiful place where we decided to drop the anchor. I allowed my sons to jump off the boat into the warm ocean. They splashed around for about ten minutes and then Tom and Sean climbed on deck, but Jim stayed in the water.
“Strange,” I thought, “Why would he be staying there so long?”
"Then I saw a big puffed up bag-looking thing. It had skinny flippers and a short tail. What sort of creature was that? When I looked closer, I saw Jim.
“Son!” I gasped.
Beside him was a pufferfish and two meters behind him was a school of barracudas that he hadn't noticed. I dove in the water with a spear gun. Phoot! I shot my spear and hit a barracuda in his short dorsal fin, but that didn't make it give up the battle. That fish shot out like the spear I hurt it with. “Oops,” I thought. Its mouth was getting wider when I saw its razor sharp teeth. The pufferfish sprung into action. It puffed itself bigger than the barracuda. I was astonished because it scared off the whole school. I quickly swam and brought Jim to the deck.
When we were drying off, I said, “Jim, I want to have a chat with you.”
Grumpily, I walked inside and started thinking about what happened five minutes ago. How could a pufferfish scare a school of barracudas?
“Jim,” I called and ordered him to come into the cabin.
He shrugged then walked quietly down stairs.
“Why were you swimming with a fat fish in the water?” I demanded.
“Well, he's my friend and he isn't fat. He's a pufferfish and he saved me, Dad. And I like him as much as he likes me,” Jim answered.
“Huh?” I wondered.
My wife called me to correct Sean’s math, so Jim started swimming with the so called friendly pufferfish again. I decided to get him out of the water, especially when I saw Jim videoing his new friend of his.
“What should we do?” I asked my wife. “Those pufferfish are poisonous.”
“I don’t know,” she replied as Jim entered the room. “Movoboat,” she then whispered so Jim could not hear.
“Huh?” he asked.
Mom spoke up, “Take a break from the water. We’re going to move to an island.”
Jim sniffed and started looking at his video. We heard a lot of Puffy is the name of this beautiful puffer fish. A tear dripped down Jim's face. Then he ran onto the deck when the motor turned on. Jim looked towards the ocean and saw a balloon-shaped white fish following us. He grinned and sat down in the cockpit and kept looking at the pufferfish that was following the boat. Was Jim wearing his biggest grin for a pufferfish? For a moment I was confused. Had Jim's pufferfish saved him from those bad barracudas? How had the pufferfish and Jim escaped the sharp tooth monsters?
“Poukeymotu, at last,” I said when I saw a big blue house that said “Marine Biologist ” in the distance.
This was my chance to find out whether Jim could safely swim with Puffy. We anchored and settled into our dinghy, heading for the ichthyologist's aquarium. When we were five meters away from this “genius” we saw an old man go on the dock.
“ Ahoy,” he said as we walked on shore.
“Are Pufferfish safe to swim with? ” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
I looked at Jim with Puffy, as they swam
together the rest of the summer.