|
Scuba Snoopy has a thing for seahorses. Not in that weird sort of fetish way, but more of a fascination for an animal that looks like a scientific experiment between a horse and a dragon that had gone horribly wrong. Plus Scuba Snoopy is bigger than seahorses so they don’t scare him! Scuba Snoopy (aka Snoops) had seen many seahorses in his time, ranging from the huge Pot Belly Seahorse in Australia that was almost as big as him, to the tiny pygmy seahorses in Indonesia that he needed a magnifying glass to see. But there was one seahorse that continued to elude Scuba Snoopy... the mysterious bad @rse Tiger Tail Seahorse of the Indo Pacific that had been avoiding him for many years. Snoops wanted this seahorse... and he wanted it bad! Previous leads had taken him throughout Indonesia and Thailand and on each occasion it was case of ‘you should have been here last week’; this seahorse was more of a Houdini than Bin Laden, it just didn’t want to be found! This time round Snoops had good hard intelligence, the sort of intel that James Bond would give his life for. There had been a recent sighting of the Tiger Tail running the show at Ducomi Pier located off Dumaguete in the central Philippines. A quick smashing of the VISA and Snoops was on his flight, off to finally have it out with his arch nemesis the Tiger Tail. 30 hours later, via a brief layover in Singapore Airport where Snoops was almost signed up as a F1 driver, Snoops was kicking back in the pool at Pura Vida resort, home to Sea Explorers dive centre. Snoops was impressed with this resort, a huge upgrade when compared to his usual back packing lifestyle!
The next morning they were off on the hunt, now was the moment of truth for Snoops. He wasn’t getting any younger and these globe-trotting adventures around the globe were starting to take their toll on his body; he wasn’t the spritely young puppy anymore that he used to be! It was only 10 mins into the dive when the seahorse tracker (aka dive guide) started banging away like a bed head in Kings Cross; he’d found the goods!
Snoops dashed over to encounter the tracker with a seahorse cruising around in front of him... but it was the wrong seahorse! This was just your run of the mill average Joe Blow ‘common seahorse’...didn’t the seahorse tracker realise that the Tiger Tail has double cheek spines whilst the common seahorse only has one??? Snoops was peeved!!! He’d flown all this way on the promise of a Tiger Tail only to be shown a boring seahorse that he’d seen a billion times before. This just wasn’t good enough and Snoops turned his back and swam off very dejected! 4 more days of searching and the Tiger Tail was still proving to be elusive, Snoops was at his wits end. All this way, all this money and the Tiger Tail wasn’t to be seen. Snoops did however manage to get rather up close with a curious flamboyant cuttlefish. This was pretty cool until the cuttlefish started to change colour and wrapped her tentacles around his body...even though it was doing a good job at matching his fin colour, Snoops was very reluctant as he wasn’t all that keen on interspecies relationships!!!
There was one more dive to go, and Snoops was insistent that they went back to Ducomi Pier for one last look. It didn’t matter that the Tiger Tail hadn’t been seen there for the past 5 days; he was chucking all his bones in the one basket and hoping his Tiger Tail numbers would come up trumps.
As Snoopy was approaching one of the pylons he encountered a Giant Snake Eel in the sand. Just as Snoops was checking him out all hell broke loose. Unbeknownst to Snoops, the snake eel was in cahoots with the Tiger Tail and lashed out dragging Snoops into his den. The world went dark for Snoops... was this it – could this be the end for Scuba Snoopy?
But in a moment of ‘Bondness’, Snoops pushed his reg down the eels throat and purged... purged like he’d never purged before. With an almighty burp, the Snake eel spat Snoops out and sent him flying into one of the jetty pylons. However a miracle occurred! By divine intervention, Snoops had been thrown into the sacred pylon. There it was, right in front of his little black button nose, the holy grail of the seahorse world. The top dog, the underworld king, the Tiger Tail had been found clinging to a sponge under Ducomi Pier. Now was the moment of truth, was the Tiger Tail willing to cooperate or was Snoops going to have to open a ‘can of kick@rse’ and perform his Jackie Chan moves. But it was over in a flash... the Tiger Tail stuck out his tail with a “How do you do’ and Snoops was in... he’d been accepted into the brotherhood of seahorses.
And that was it. Snoops had at long last tracked down his seahorse and could finally hang the sign “Mission Accomplished”. Finally, this little puppy dog could sleep in peace and not worry about whether the Tiger Tail would ever be found, his work here was done. So where to next for this aging Puppy Dog...one heard rumours that the sharks were calling again...the sharks with the big pointy teeth were asking who let the dogs out.... Scuba Snoopy wants to extends his thanks to the good staff at Pura Vida and Sea Explorers Dive Resort and in particular Rico who looked after him underwater! |
