Wow! Look what the Gulf threw up today. It's amazing to think that all of this stuff and a million other creatures are out there living their lives in the deep blue sea. Well, okay......a lot of the time, it's green. The spiral-shaped objects that look like snakes are actually whelk egg cases, and the round prickly ones are sea urchins. The beach was littered with live scallops, mussels, crabs, and cockles (mmmm......dinner), among other interesting finds. I discovered that scallops are bivalves whose two sides might not resemble each other at all. It's as if they are twins who insist on having separate identities and refuse to wear those cute matching outfits their moms have selected for them. I managed to collect a number of empty fragile fig shells (a real find when they are intact), but also tried to rescue likely survivors of other species and toss them back from whence they came. I don't know why I do it, or whether it does any good...... just hate to see them helplessly stranded out of their element. Conversely, I hope they would toss me back up on the beach if I were gasping for air in their milieu. Seriously wonder what brought them all here. Did they decide to go for a stroll on the shore? Did they want to see whether they could make it in our world? Did they go back home at high tide? I know that their presence has something to do with the whims of Mother Nature, but it seems a bit of a phenomenon that so many came to visit at one time.
You are not permitted to take live shells from these beaches because the area has been really overshelled so you can look and touch, but you can't take them home with you........and please don't step on any of our little friends.
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