A handful of senior citizens and our family attended the Seashell Identification class today at the activity room here at the villa.
While the picture I snapped is not the most flattering, the "sheller" teaching the class folded and presented her words in such a way that I could have listened to her for a long time. She taught us much:
The natural holes in shells are usually from sea stars eating the insides; female blue crabs have an apron on their bellies and a red dominant claw; conches are different than welks; we saw the little welk babies that come out of the egg casing (and yes, we did feel awesome that we knew what those egg casings were!); bull sharks, great whites, tiger sharks, and sand sharks are all in the bay here -- note: those first three are the most common to munch on people; when sand dollars are alive they are fuzzy and darker and you will be fined if you take them; horseshoe crab blood is royal blue; best time to go shelling is the first low tide; you should always clean your shells because you can get E.coli and/or Salmonella; oysters alternate their gender, switching from male to female and often back again, etc.; you can find fossilized shark teeth if you dig around a sediment line; if you find a shiny snow white olive shell you can probably sell it for over $1,000; pluff mud -- a bit like quicksand -- is where one finds the best shells; Bull Island is a sheller's paradise (but crawling with alligators); and other things that I've already forgotten.
The moppets were supposed to get a bit of math and science tackled today, but they were very busy. They went to the beach and built a major structure, they made me "vacation" birthday presents, and they prepared a birthday party. It is neither Grandpa's or my birthday today, but we are February babies, and as The Dad is leaving, tonight was deemed the night to celebrate our birthdays. My gifts will be coming on my actual birthday when we are home, but they didn't want to have a party without giving me something, so the The Boy constructed me a recycling plant/factory in the shower, and the girl combed and combed until she found little shells with natural holes in them to make jewelry for me. The kids hid our gifts and made us play hot/cold until we discovered them -- there was much squealing and some confusing directions: "HOT! You're about to get frostbite!" Eventually all gifts were discovered.
I'm pretty sure that never in his almost-72 years has the grandpa had to work harder for more random gifts (his were made at home before we came -- some very detailed, hand-crafted I-spy posters, and a tiny horse that we had to keep relocating off the table and/or the counter for a couple of days because the work on it went on for so long), but the love he showed to the kids by way of profuse words of love for the gifts was endearing. The kids love their grandparents -- they have so looked forward to this time with them -- and the grandparents clearly love the kids.
And now we are all going to bed early with the high hopes of getting up early. Low tide is in the wee hours of the morning, and we won't be there in the pluff mud with our flashlights getting hypothermia. However, we are going to get up before the sun and see what we can find (if our only shelling competition is our classmates today we should be in good shape). Our educator told us that the bottlenose dolphins that are common here are often seen at sunrise. It's kind of exciting to go to bed with the idea that in the morning we venture out in the hopes of finding treasure and adventure. If we find neither that will be okay, for the treasure and adventure came to us tonight.
