Once in Criccieth I came across a line of shiny silver fish, whitebait I think, a foot deep and almost half a mile long. Thousands on tens of thousands of tiny lives washed in by the waves and dumped on the sand to die a wriggly death.
Another time it was birds, Guillemots, dozens of the poor things. Brought down by the wind and washed up to be left to dry to matted feather lumps on the shingle. I reported it to DEFRA, it was at the time of avian flu scare, but they never came back to me.
Starfish carpets, jellyfish mattresses, a seal or two, once a small dolphin – there’s always some echo of drama on the tide-line.
This time it was spider crabs, legs, claws, bodies - a long line of spider crab pieces stretching the length of Hell’s Mouth like some kind of crazed model kit. I found over twenty large shells in a couple of minutes, orange, yellow, brown, green, and hundreds of legs and claws – a complete colony of spider crabs, washed up and wrecked on the pebbles.
As I carefully arranged them on the driftwood backdrop I’d positioned to maximise the photo-opportunity of their tragedy, I wondered what had happened to them. How did so many creatures come to their end simultaneously to be thrown up onto the shore at Hell’s Mouth creating a two mile line of crustacean debris? A fierce storm, a strong current, a giant wave – what maelstrom of nature did they get caught up in I wonder?
Perhaps that’s the way - one moment swimming happily along, the next caught by something completely unexpected and…
There they are again, the three dots of uncertainty – how I hate them.
I once spotted a cow washed up on a beach in Ireland - probably a farmer illegally dumping a dead animal.
ReplyDeleteI'm also very unhappy about a goose on Malton Golf Club who's limping and the other geese and goslings have cold shouldered him. I've reported it to the club secretary, next step RSPB.
I've seen dead sheep, and once in Cornwall a huge jelly creature, but never a cow.
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