and a short story about just another glorious Florida afternoon.
I just had time after my business activity in Orlando to zip out
Eastward towards Merritt Island and finally Cocoa Beach, yesterday
(Sunday)
afternoon. Mouthing "hi" to Bobbi and Jim Cordy as I passed thru
Merritt Island, I then got an impulse to pull off at the little
parklet just before the bridge going over the Banana River. Looking
for shells of course. Nothing except a few tiny melongena which I
left until I went under the bridge and looked carefully at a mossy
slab of concrete partially submerged in the water.  It was covered with
shell life ! Live melongena.
Nassarius vibex. Other small species, crabs, sea life. And...everywhere -
urosalpynix tampaensis !  I must have seen 50 of them on the slab, in the
shallow water nearby, and on under some smaller slabs of rock I
turned over.
I just enjoyed
looking, sitting and listening to the cars above go thwack thwack
thwack as they crossed the bridge) left everything except 5 specimens of
the drills.
2 or 3 for me, and 2 or 3 for anyone who would like 'em for study or any
other purposes.( Interested ? Send me an e-mail. )  On Cocoa Beach, what I
call my "Jacksonville Strategy"
(look at the little inlets where the water runs out on the beach
for shells - yielded me a number of epitonium in Jacksonville, 1998) -
nothing. Neither did the "John Lloyd Strategy" (shake the seaweed clumps
up further on the wave line) yield anything.  There was one pair of
coquinas. And so ended a pleasant and brief afternoon of FL shelling.

Karen