Ross,

Maybe a lot of us have not played any shell pranks. But if you had asked
us what shelling mistakes we had made, or stupid shelly things we had
done that we regretted later, we might be more forthcoming.

Very early in our shelling experience, very many years ago, down in the
lower Keys, blissfully lost in the back country and shelling out of a
john boat at a very low tide, we found shells we simply did not
recognize. They were big gastropods, about five inches spire to "spout,"
and were fairly evenly spaced all over a bare (not a blade of grass!!)
sandy bottom in about 5 feet, a shell about every 20 feet or so. They
were white mottled with brown or yellow, or orange or even a bright, hot
pink in one case and pure white in another! Golden horny periostracum
covered them.  Deliriously  excited at our fantastic find, of course we
took one of each color!

Lucky to find our way out of a maze of back country channels before the
marina sent out the Coast Guard to find us (the Lord does look after
lost shellers, doesn't He?), we returned to our motel,  and to our
single shell book (the "Little Green Abbott"), confident we had a lot of
something rare!  But we couldn't recognize the critter anywhere in
Abbott's pages. One of the distinguishing characteristics seemed to be a
very thin outer lip. !  !! You guessed it...immature shells! But we
didn't know enough then to guess at their identity, let alone their age.

Much later, we learned (from Walter Sage) that we had take five young
Milk Conchs, just at the point of forming their mature lip and on the
verge (no pun intended here, certainly) of their sexual maturity!  These
shells are not common in the Keys, in our experience, so we have never
ceased to worry that our ignorant grabbing of these five teenagers
harmed a budding Milk Conch population somewhere near Johnson Keys! Too
late!

Lynn Scheu

Ross Mayhew wrote:
>
> The list has become such a deadly serious place that nobody dares share
> their favorite shell pranks???
>
> -R.
>
> <Somebody wrote;
>
> Barney Winston's anecdote about scattering misc. shells on the beach in
> front of their hotel made me think: i'll bet half the list can tell
> about little shell-related jokes and pranks they played on gentle,
> unsuspecting folk at some point in their Conchological Career.
>
>         To give the ball a little push, i have a confession myself.
> When i was in Labrador trying to get a bit of "extreme shelling" in, i
> had plenty of time to spare because the Chlamys islandica trawler i went
> out on had almost no luck at all for the first 1.5 days, so they packed
> up shop and left me behind.  I roamed the foothills of the Torngat
> Mountains from my base in Nain, and was constantly coming across the
> carefully constructed "Inukshuks" (ok, don't quote me on the spelling!),
> which are man-shaped cairns built by the Inuit to mark where they had
> been, and possibly to act as landmarks.  One day, on a whim, i built my
> own - with a little "twist": i stowed about a dozen attractive
> Philippine, Indian, Floridan and Zanzibarican shells in the cracks and
> crannies of my own little pile of rocks.  I can just imagine some Inuit,
> Dene or tourist coming across my Faux-Inukshuk and finding these
> curiously un-subarctic objects of natural history hiding in its
> innards.....of course if it is one of the multitudes of children i gave
> similar shells to on that trip, perhaps they will remember me, and
> wonder whatever happened to the strange Shell Man who promised to come
> back some day (and with any luck, i will!!).
>
> Spring is Sprung in Neu Shotland - Coltsfeet all over the place!!
>
> > From: "Barney, Winston" <[log in to unmask]>
> >
> > Of Sea and Shore magazine, Vol. 12, no.2  (1981-82) has a full page color photo of three strombs collected at Guaymas, Mexico. The photo  caption requests that anyone having ideas about their identification should write to O.S & S.
> > Was this a joke by Tom, or were these shells "planted" by some  tricksters? I have searched the subsequent issues of O.S.& S. for  reactions to the photo, but I am not able to find an answer. Since the shells appear to be S. alatus, I'm wondering how they got there.  We recently spent a week or so shelling in Guaymas. Our hotel at San Carlos was on a barren beach, but on the last night of our trip we > left ALL our leftovers - the shells we couldn't pack - on the beach in > front of the hotel. The next day , while waiting to leave, we observed  several other folks exclaiming in amazement at the all the pretty > shells, most of which came from miles away and much different habitat.   I wonder if the shells pictured by Tom were mischieviously  transplanted or just the victims of poor locality data?
> >
> >
> > Winston Barney
> > Fort Worth, Texas