Hi, Everyone!

Now it's my turn to tell a story about pets and shells.  I thought that I would never get the opportunity to tell anyone but a few family members.

In 1976 I began dredging for shells in Southern Newfoundland.  I was surprised at the variety of species I was bringing up, and also the large numbers of chitons, particularly Tonicella rubra and T. marmoreus.

On one occasion I dredged in a new locality and obtained about eighty specimens of both species.  I was very excited and carefully dried the chitons.  As both species are fairly small, they were well-dried after a few weeks.  One evening I untied them from their drying boards and placed them on a small table in our kitchen.  My wife and I went out to visit my parents for a couple of hours, but, when we returned, all my chitons had disappeared!

I began to search for them but to no avail.  Our cat, Scratch, was rubbing around my legs as I tried to find the missing chitons.  Finally I gave up and decided to search again later.  I had no idea what could have happened to them.  About an hour later, I heard a retching sound in the hallway near the living room.  Scratch was vomiting profusely on the linoleum.  As I approached the distressed cat, I was amazed to see chitons in the puke!  Scratch was always hungry, so he must have smelled the dried bodies of the chitons and consumed them all.

I stubbornly resolved to recover all the chitons I could, so, while my wife fled the scene, I knelt down by Scratch and began to pick out the chitons.  The smell was, well...interesting!  I recovered about sixty of them and had to rinse them thoroughly.  However, even after partially passing through the digestive track of an ever-hungry tomcat, they were in good condition.  Some have been traded but most of them are still in my collection.

Who's next?
Ron



On Sun, 13 January 2002, Barbara Jouvernaux wrote:

>
> These stories of pets and shells have had me smiling lately. I thought I
> would tell you about my Springer Spaniel "Meg" who is perhaps the world's
> first canine conchologist. In the 9 months I have had her she has "stolen"
> shells from boxes in the garage on numerous occasions. Never once has she
> damaged them - she always hides them under the blanket in her basket and
> seems very put out when I reclaim them!
>
> Lately my cat had seven kittens and when they were just 2 days old someone
> left the door open and Meg came in and "catnapped" one of the kittens. When
> we realised we ran outside in a panic, not holding out much hope for the
> poor kitten, as she is a hunting dog and often kills rabbits and other small
> furry creatures in the blink of an eye. But to our amazement she had simply
> taken it into her kennel and it was completely unharmed. I can only presume
> she was jealous of the cat and wanted a baby of her own!
>
> Happy shelling everyone!
> Regards,
> Barbara Jouvernaux
> RD4 Cambridge
> New Zealand


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