Refreshing
Hot & muggy the last couple of days--though far from the scorching of inland. Nevertheless, I was glad to escape at 6am this morning and head for the beach. Ended up at Bob's Creek Wayside, with incredible low tides, and totally scored.
1) A real, live, baby hermit crab in a borrowed shell. I moved him from the top of a drying rock to a pool because Cedar-dog was about to chomp on him. So cute!!!
2) Unbelievable amounts of starfish, the orange & purple kind that look like big, squishy, blobby rock-huggers. They're in fact surprisingly hard. Cedar picked a couple of them up and carried them around till I caught her, and they just stayed frozen in position. The one she dropped upside down did have little sucker-feet poke out to try and right itself, so I helped it along.
3) All kinds of different seaweed, from dark spiny stuff to fluttering ribbons. Lots of chicken-of-the-woods type stuff, too, in a dark purple fringed with cream.
4) A heron! Perfectly engaged in scouting out the denizens of the formerly-and-soon-to-be-again deep.
5) Two sea otters!!!! Oh, my heart bounced when I saw them weaving their playful ways in the water. The ocean was so smooth this morning, too--hardly a ripple, and only the tiniest of curls as the swells neared the shore--so it was an easy delight to watch the pair gliding between the rocks. I kept the dogs close by to enjoy the sleeks longer...
6) And then some jerk picking up stones from the shore. =( I'm pretty sure he was on an illegal mission--not even a friendly nod or meeting of eye. A whole pick-up truck full.
7) Barnacles, mussels, strange tracks that fled from one sandy spot to another, stopping at suspicious sand hollows. Tiny dark and light striped fish. Sea anemones in profusion. Fresh, cool, morning air...
I always feel so blessed when I'm invisible enough to see animals free and wild and doing their own thing. I wish it happened more often...
1) A real, live, baby hermit crab in a borrowed shell. I moved him from the top of a drying rock to a pool because Cedar-dog was about to chomp on him. So cute!!!
2) Unbelievable amounts of starfish, the orange & purple kind that look like big, squishy, blobby rock-huggers. They're in fact surprisingly hard. Cedar picked a couple of them up and carried them around till I caught her, and they just stayed frozen in position. The one she dropped upside down did have little sucker-feet poke out to try and right itself, so I helped it along.
3) All kinds of different seaweed, from dark spiny stuff to fluttering ribbons. Lots of chicken-of-the-woods type stuff, too, in a dark purple fringed with cream.
4) A heron! Perfectly engaged in scouting out the denizens of the formerly-and-soon-to-be-again deep.
5) Two sea otters!!!! Oh, my heart bounced when I saw them weaving their playful ways in the water. The ocean was so smooth this morning, too--hardly a ripple, and only the tiniest of curls as the swells neared the shore--so it was an easy delight to watch the pair gliding between the rocks. I kept the dogs close by to enjoy the sleeks longer...
6) And then some jerk picking up stones from the shore. =( I'm pretty sure he was on an illegal mission--not even a friendly nod or meeting of eye. A whole pick-up truck full.
7) Barnacles, mussels, strange tracks that fled from one sandy spot to another, stopping at suspicious sand hollows. Tiny dark and light striped fish. Sea anemones in profusion. Fresh, cool, morning air...
I always feel so blessed when I'm invisible enough to see animals free and wild and doing their own thing. I wish it happened more often...