2. Spotted Snail

Now, in the kingdom of the sky snails, there were snails with a variety of patterns on their shells. There were shells with stripes, and shells with zigzags, and solid-colored shells. But there was only one sky snail in the entire kingdom who had a spotted shell. He was a dark blue snail named Ralf. He was very proud of his spots, and the other sky snails admired him very much. Except for Linwood.

Linwood was a smallish sky snail of a pale purple color. He wasn’t ever particularly excited by what was popular. Of course he realized that there was a spotted snail in the kingdom, but he wasn’t impressed by this. Interested, yes, but not nearly as interested as the spotted snail himself would have liked. He was a simple snail with simple pleasures. He liked chatting with trail-eating tanagers, giving chipmunks and rabbits rides, and drawing slime trail pictures in the air.

One day, Ralf happened to notice suddenly that Linwood wasn’t paying him the proper attention. He decided, naturally enough, that this situation had to be fixed. But how?

First, he tried getting some of his more enthusiastic fans to follow him as he paraded around and around Linwood, shouting loudly, “Here is the spotted snail, Ralf!”

But Linwood just smiled cheerfully and said hi to all of them. He kept on his way to visit his grandmother and didn’t really know why these other snails kept circling him. Still, if it made them happy, it didn’t particularly bother him.

Since that didn’t work, next Ralf decided to have a long conversation with Linwood about the patterns on shells. Linwood was busy examining a daisy tree that was in bloom when Ralf found him. Ralf was disappointed that Linwood didn’t listen to him silently. Linwood responded politely enough to Ralf, but he also inserted his own comments on the beauty of daisy trees and other matters that he thought might be interesting to Ralf.

Ralf decided to try something more drastic next. That night, after Linwood was snugly curled up in his snail shell for the night on top of a pleasant hill, Ralf got to work. He had spent hours making posters, and he now posted them all over on the trees and bushes surrounding Linwood. Some of them said, “Spotted Snails are Best!” some of them, “Pay Special Attention to Spotted Snails!” and still others, “Ralf: The Only Spotted Snail in the Kingdom.”

Ralf was getting along nicely with his poster posting when Linwood woke up and poked an eye out of his shell.

“It’s not morning yet, Ralf, is it?” he asked, sleepily.

“No,” the embarrassed Ralf hurried to say. “Go back to sleep. I won’t be here long.”

By this time, Linwood had noticed one of the posters, and he poked the rest of his head out of his shell to examine it. He solemnly studied each poster, and as he did, he was confused at first. But by the time he had looked at the last poster, he understood.

“So that’s what you’ve been up to all this time!” he said. “I had been wondering. You’ve never paid much attention to me before, and I was wondering why you were suddenly interested in me. But…” he continued, confused, “naturally a spotted sky snail shell is interesting and unusual, but doesn’t mine work just as well?”

Ralf stared at Linwood. He hadn’t thought of that before. He felt even more embarrassed now. “That’s a completely new idea to me!” he finally confessed. “I think that you are right.”

Linwood smiled a snaily smile. “Why don’t we go back to bed?” he asked sleepily, and after a cheerful good-night, he went back into his shell, except for one eye that peeked out at Ralf.

Ralf settled down next to one of his ridiculous posters (deciding right away to feed them to a sea cucumber in the morning, as sea cucumbers loved to eat paper that other creatures no longer needed). He curled up inside his shell, except for one eye that peeked out at Linwood.

Then, happily, they both brought their eyes inside and fell asleep.

It was noticed after that day that Ralf stopped talking so much about his spotted shell. The other sky snails also noticed that Ralf and an ordinary-looking and smallish pale purple snail (whose name, Linwood, they could remember if they thought about it hard enough) were suddenly firm friends and were often found together drawing pictures in the sky, or giving sea cucumbers papery treats, or going to visit Linwood’s grandmother.