Aliens, Critters, and Dinosaurs

The Elves and the Crocodile King

This is the story of how bowling first started.

The Elves and the Crocodile King

Children, gather round. For today I shall tell you the story of bowling.

Long ago when dwarfs and elves were friends, there were two children who played together always. One was a dwarf named Saspa and the other, yes, you guessed it, was the famous elf, Nickerby.

Well, these children, as children always do, frequently went to places where they shouldn’t be. Their parents scolded, and their cousins preached, but the two kept on returning to the Zimbagwe Swamp.

It was the hour of the crocodiles’ stroll. You remember how they always strut about and display their alligator boots each afternoon. Well, that day they were busy showing off when Saspa and Nickerby passed by.

You children know that it is not wise to peek in on crocodiles modeling their fashions. The lady crocs with their croc-skin purses and hats decorated in croc teeth and scales are not at all something that elf and dwarf eyes should see, for the beauty of such beasts casts spells on us, and we enter into their parade.

But Saspa and Nickerby never listened to anyone. They sat behind the Koopoo tree and bent their ears and eyes around its shadow, lapping up the pageant’s display, wishing they could join. When all of a sudden, the King of the Crocs stood up on his hind legs and danced. Now, the King of the Crocs is the head wizard, and his magic smoked the air.

Saspa and Nickerby, as if they’d been collared and leashed, were pulled into that spectacle. The King of the Crocs wove his magic stronger, and the baby crocs raced around and around the small dwarf and elf. Of course, you know that crocodiles cannot go in a circle. Their tails will not allow that, so the track they made in their excitement formed a narrow, rectangular lane. Those young crocs raced down that lane and then flipped over to gallop down the other side.

And all that time Saspa and Nickerby were spellbound by the King’s magic. They swayed and danced to the music he played with his writhing tail fiddling against his long, crooked, sharp teeth.

You can imagine the fate of those two if Nickerby had not slipped on a slime-covered stone. His head went down and hit the muck, washing away the magic. When he rose, he saw the long passage of crocs and the King with his toothy violin. Nickerby shook his friend, Saspa, and smeared him with mud, and they both came out of their daze, but it was almost too late, for the baby crocs, full of hunger, had begun to move closer. Now, because those reptiles had raced around that narrow track so many times, they’d created a ridge, and the only way they could move closer was down at the end by the Crocodile King.

Nickerby saw that at least nine of the crocs had already reached that point of the long, tubular alley, and he yelled at Saspa to gather up mud. So the two of them squished and squashed a whole heap of mud, and they rolled it up into a ball. Then Saspa sent that ball rolling down the corridor, but it jumped out and tumbled four crocs back into the swamp water.

Nickerby worked even harder at making his mud ball, smoothing and forming small holes for a good grip. Then Nickerby sent his ball rolling, rolling down that lane, and his aim was so perfect, the ball so carefully formed, that he scored with a perfect strike. Down went the center King and all the crocs around him. Up went Nickerby’s arms in a triumphant cheer.

But the crocs continued pouring into that small opening down at the end of the long alley they’d created. Over and over, the boys formed balls, thumb and two finger holes for grasp. Strike went Saspa. Strike went Nickerby, this time adding a short run and a smooth glide to the roll.

Nickerby and Saspa ended up bowling over all those crocs, each time with the King rising up into position at the head. In the end, all the crocs, with their claws holding their headachy heads, crawled back into the muddy swamp water.

Saspa and Nickerby gave high-fives and ran back to their village proper, but each carried in their hands a well-formed and holed ball to share with the townsfolk.

Now you children all know how bowling evolved from there. One day the Kings refused to stand in the center, complaining that their heads hurt. So Saspa and Nickerby returned to the swamp, when the crocs were not around, and they built pretend-crocs from swamp mud.

Those mud crocs were inclined to spin dreadfully, but everyone's headache quickly went away. The spins or pins, as they came to be called, were a vast improvement over crocs, but sadly the competitions between dwarf and elf grew so embittered that the dwarfs retired to their caverns and have refused to come out since.

It is said that the volcanoes that erupt now and then are caused from the friction of dwarf bowling balls hitting their pins, for the dwarfs play incessantly, and sometimes you can hear the rumbling inside their mountains.

We elves take things more in stride. We only play in the morning, rolling our balls across the sky, leaving behind tiny drops of dew, for we long ago gave up playing in the mud. Our games now are light and sweet, and we only cheer when we knock aphids to the ground.

Now it’s the humans who have taken the game up with great joy. They pretend they can play as well as we, but we know, don’t we children, that it’s really the elves who started Bowling -- the elves and the Crocodile King.