driftwoody

Today we made our weekly beach foray, observing the tide, the waves, the surfers, the wildlife, for educational purposes.

Some weekly visits are more educational than others.

What trip to the beach is complete without beachcombing? We found some pretty iridescent shells, Sunny found ten intact top crabshells, and Merry ran up with this:

"Mommy, look at this! What is it? It looks like some kind of bone!"

Er. . . some kind of bone indeed.

Let's get up close and personal, shall we?

Ummmmmmmmm, yeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Me to all the girls eagerly clustered around me (including Sunny's 9 yr old BF):
"It almost looks like some part of a . . . (mind racing) statue. . . what part of the body does it look like to you?"

"An arm!"

"A foot!"

"A head!"

They were really good guessers (esp. whoever guessed that last one ; ). But since none of them seemed to recognize the body part, I said, "I think it looks like a finger." And they all seemed satisfied with that and I nonchalantly pocketed the item (insert your own Mae West "banana in the pocket" variant here) and saved it. To show you, of course.

Don't thank me yet.

That's one dirty finger.

Ok, this has got to be the weirdest/grossest thing I have ever seen washed up on the beach, rotting seal carcases included. It is some kind of stiff (ha) molded plastic about the length of my index finger, but fatter, and as you can see, hollow. Because of the fragments of some kind of woven string left attached there on the underside, I think this was made as some kind of necklace. . . charm? A discarded favor from a frat beach party? Some modern witch doctor's potency charm? An overpriced souvenir from some "exotic" vacation package?

Whatever its origin, it is all the more disturbing for the bite marks all over it. Shark? Dog at the beach? (Maybe he thought it was a bone too.)

But it had clearly been long adrift, sterilized by sea and wind and sand, so at least I was not worried about it being safe to handle.

And now, to the rubbish bin. . .

Now you can thank me.