Piper is the titular protagonist of the 2016 Disney/Pixar animated short of the same name. She is a sandpiper hatchling that suffers from aquaphobia (fear of water). Despite this, she is taught how to overcome her fears with the help of a hermit crab.
Role in the short film[]
Piper's mother wakes up with her chick one morning as Piper sees her mother fly to the shoreline to find food for her chick. When her mother tells her to come to the shoreline to get food, Piper runs off to the shoreline so she could be fed but her mother tells her to find her own food. Suddenly when the tide rises on the shoreline, Piper becomes soaked by the wave as her mother returns back to the shoreline. Hungry, Piper returns back to the shoreline and hides behind a rock and suddenly notices the tide rising again as she hides behind some dry seaweed. Suddenly, she notices some hermit crabs scurry to the shoreline as they hide in their shells when the tide rises on the shoreline.
Piper then follows what the hermit crabs did when the tide rises as she and the other three hermit crabs hide into the sand when another wave approaches. Meanwhile underwater, the tiny hermit crab wakes up Piper as she discovers several clams on the sand. As the tide goes down, Piper has finally conquered her aquaphobia as she thanks the tiny hermit crab for helping her. Piper then arrives back to her mother as she now gets used to water like the other sandpipers as she finds a clam and eats it. Happy that she is now satisfied with conquering her fear, Piper then gives the other sandpipers some more clams for them to eat as she finally gets in contact with the water on the shoreline, making her mother very proud of her. Later that night, Piper and her mother sleep together as Piper feels satisfied with herself in conquering her fear of water.
Trivia[]
- Piper makes a cameo appearance on a poster behind Hank in a Finding Dory Kellogg's commercial (even though this clearly doesn't appear in the movie).
- This is also the first non-film Easter egg since the Pizza Planet truck Easter egg from the video game of The Incredibles.
