– Бывает, что и так. Но в основном этому способствуют птицы.
– Кто? – хором в недоумении булькнул класс.
– Да-да. И в этом нет ничего удивительного. Пернатые, плавая по поверхности воды, своими лапками цепляют наши икринки, те прилипают к лапкам, и таким образом, переносятся в другие водоёмы. Но на сегодня это всё. Запишите домашнее задание, – Ласточка на минуту задумалась, чтобы этакое задать своим ученикам, и даже закрыла глаза. А когда открыла, в гроте уже никого не было. Лишь неповоротливая Камбала никуда не уплыла, ведь обнаружила своих любимых рачков прямо у входа в грот.
Chapter 3. The next day. Flying fish
– Miss Swallow! Is it true that fish can fly? A hermit crab told me about it. As for me, I can’t. I tried, but I failed to make it.– Smelt chattered without a stop, following her teacher.
– Hold on, you restless! Wait for a few minutes and you will learn it. You had better swim quickly and fetch Madam Cuttlefish. We need her ink for the lesson. We are going to write a lot today, – the elderly fish wanted to wipe the sweat from her forehead with a fin, but remembered in time that she was in the sea, and in fact, fish cannot sweat.
Blue Whale School. Five minutes later
– Gudgeons! Are you going to calm down today? If not, I will have to call the head master here! Mister Stingray, with his thorn will bring you into line in no time, and somebody, the most disobedient, may be…
– What? What may happen to that fish? – squeaked little Khamsa, peeking out from behind a stone.
– May be eaten up! That is what I mean! As far as I remember, it has happened so, but actually, very seldom.
So, the topic of today’s lesson is «Flying fish and Creeping fish».
I will be honest with you. Unlike yesterday, today I had to arrive here long before our class started…
– Why? – Jocky, the fidget, interrupted the teacher in his usual manner.
But this time Miss Swallow did not resent or reprimand him. She just continued calmly:
– I had to dig out and invite Miss Flounder to the lesson. This is not an easy task, for she and her relatives always burrow into the sand when they see danger. And I had to make a special effort to explain that I am not a predator and do not feed on flounders. Only when I gave her a compliment having called her the most charming and attractive fish in the world, because she is the only fish that has both eyes on the same side… In a word, meet her «beautifulness» Mrs. Flounder in person!
On hearing this, the monitor of the class fish Needle made Madam Cuttlefish angry, and the latter filled the whole class with her ink.
All the minnows had to wave their tails and fins vigorously to be able to see something in the ink clouds.
After the break
Miss Swallow had difficulty in driving back all the naughty students to their places. She was doing it with the help of her bifurcated tail.
– Well, to resume, – she said, then thought for a minute and addressed the class with a question: – Where do we start? Shall we begin with creeping or flying fish?
The little fish started making a hubbub, as if they were not under water, but were flying in the sky like jackdaws. The class was split in half.
Meanwhile, the teacher was turning her head from side to side, not knowing which group to prefer.
The guest that had slept for the entire break, came to her rescue. She gurgled loudly and said that all her life she had been dreaming of flying, but, alas, she had to crawl.
And only when Miss Flounder closed her mouth, Miss Swallow told the students an amazing story. Once, many years ago she was swimming in the southern seas and met a real flying fish. While fleeing from predators this fish does not hide under the stones, but on the contrary, but it flies up in the air and can fly up to ten meters. The rest fishes get totally bewildered – they cannnot understand where their legal prey went.
– Do flying fish live in the rivers? – Mackerel asked with anxiety. Miss Swallow took a breath in the gills to answer, but wise Miss Flounder was ahead of her and vividly told the students a story which a friend Salmon had told her. He claimed to be personally acquainted with a fish by name Aravana. Well, she is the most terrible predator. She swims near the surface of the water, examines what is happening there in the air, and as soon as she notices someone, immediately jumps out of the water and catches insects, small birds and even little snakes hanging from tree branches in the air. Her attack is so quick that the prey is in Aravana’s mouth faster than it realizes that it has already been eaten!
– Thank you, dear Miss Flounder, – the teacher thanked the guest, – you can swim further, here is a note for you, with the coordinates of the place where you will find a large number of your favorite crustaceans, and we will continue the lesson.
On hearing this, Needle raised her fin and waved it impatiently.
– You may answer, – the teacher swam up to the monitor and stroked her sharp head.
– Are there any fish that can live without water? she gurgled and accidentally almost bit the teacher with her sharp teeth.
– You see, children, – Miss Swallow came up to the vault of the grotto, and continued, – there are places in the seas and oceans where the sea periodically recedes from the land for several kilometers, this phenomenon is called «low tide», and it lasts for several hours. But there are such fish as Anabas or creeper fish, and so, it can even move along the rocky shore for eight hours! And sometimes it crawls from one pool to another but only at night, so that the bright sun does not dry out its scale.
– Probably, this is how we, fish, appear in lakes and swamps, where we have not been before! exclaimed the quick-witted monitor.
– It happens so. But mostly birds do it.
– Who? the class gurgled in bewilderment.
– Yes, yes. And there is nothing surprising in this. Birds, floating on the water surface, their paws cling to our eggs, they stick to the claws, and thus are transferred to other pools. But that’s all for today. Write down your homework, – Miss Swallow thought for a minute musing on some additional home task and even closed her eyes. And when she opened them, there was no one in the grotto. Only the clumsy Flounder did not swim away and was looking for her favorite crustaceans right at the entrance to the grotto.
Глава 4. Совместная жизнь
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