Today I took a drive to a local college to see if I could get some
Lymnaea snails from the small campus pond, for a friend who wants some.
I found the pond half drained for some sort of construction work, and
not a snail in sight anywhere.  What was in sight was at least a couple
of hundred large mussels, mostly dead, others near the water's edge
dying.  I don't know much about fresh water bivalves, but these were by
far the largest I have even seen in the New England area, some of them
over 6 inches (150 mm) in length.  I brought home about twenty of them.
They are thin-shelled, fairly fragile, quite inflated, rather pointed at
one end and broadly rounded at the other.  I know this isn't much of a
description, but I also know there are not very many northeastern
mussels that get this large.  Any ideas what they might be?
Paul M.