surprising finds!

now i wish so much i had remembered my camera!! yesterday we went for a walk on the beach, after a night of rain, wind and pounding surf. you never know what's going to come up in surf like that, and the wind had become much softer and the air warm, so off we went. and we found...

• a THREE FOOT shark!! surrounded by seagulls, missing it's eye's and being torn open at the gills, but otherwise flawless! i was stunned to see it up on the shore. we think it may have been a baby blue shark, or even a baby white one...very very cool.

• 30 - 40 portuguese man of war jellyfish! some of them were clearly still alive, raising their "sails" every time a wave pushed them in, so kyra took a giant broken conch shell and would scoop them up and hurl them into the ocean until they got far enough out to ride the waves and disappear. very cool. very persistent girl!




• a sea slug! ew! very cool - very heavy! it curled away from me when i poked it, so i hurled it into the surf with my very best overhand outfielder throw. (it went far... i have a great arm.) :)

• dozens of round, spidery crabs, all of which megan collected in her own giant, broken conch (of which there were hundreds that would have been as big as my head if they were whole!)
  

• A SCOTCH BONNET! for FOUR YEARS every time we've been to the beach i have scoured for an unbroken one of these shells! unfortunately, their dome is very fragile and i've only ever found bits of them. until yesterday! when some of the most violent surf i've ever seen pushed an unbroken scotch bonnet right up to my feet. i screamed like a little kid!


• an united states armed forces ID from 1983 for pvt-1 tracy l. stevens. astonishing. i wonder what happened to him... i tried to google him, but came up empty. i guess i'll send it to the army and politely ask? it'd been laminated, so even his picture is still clear... amazing.

it was a great day. full of the sort of stuff you always hope to come across scouring the sand.