Get a Leg up on Summer

It’s March, and in the South, things should be looking spring-like. Normally this time of year, the daffodils are finished with their yellowy show, and the tulips are starting to push through the soil. The horrible stench of Bradford pears blooming permeates the air, and everywhere, the honk of blowing noses herald in the new season. This year, well, it’s been snow after snow after ice and freezing rain. Why, just this morning, the skies opened up and dumped a rainfall that would have been typical for a summer afternoon, but instead was accompanied by gusty winds and almost freezing temperatures. I think by now we have all had enough of this cold business. I don’t even care about spring; let’s just get to the good stuff.

In short, I miss summer. I especially miss going to the beach. Nothing beats waking up when your body has decided it’s had enough rest, eating a leisurely breakfast, and then hitting the not-yet scalding sand for a nice low tide stroll. I am particularly fond of low tide because that’s the best time for critter hunting.

Now, I was never a big fan of science or anything science-related, but I do love a good critter hunt on the beach. I might curse the squirrels and frogs and other wild life at home, but at the beach, it’s a different story. If a ghost crab pops out of his sandy hidey-hole in my presence, I will drop down on all fours like a mad dog until it surfaces again, not so I can grab it, just so I can see it. I love me some sea critters.

You never know what is going to be uncovered when the tide goes out. Usually, it’s an assortment of broken shells and garbage and seaweed that greets us. Sometimes, interesting things wash up on shore, say a dead shark or horseshoe crab. Once, my daughters and I even found a squid, not a rare giant one from the deepest depths of the ocean, but it was still pretty cool to us. If we are really lucky, we might find a whelk or a sand dollar or even a few sharks’ teeth.

For the past few years, we have found starfish, lots of starfish. I don’t really know why, after over twenty starfish free years of going to the same beach, we suddenly seem overrun with the five legged echinoderms, but nonetheless, it has become the go-to sea critter of low tide. I will fill up buckets with them, until, you know, I don’t know what to do with them, and then release them back from whence they came. Catch and release. I would never dry them out or soak them in bleach, even though I love a pristine white starfish in a gift shop. It seems cruel, not to mention there has got to be a wicked bad smell that goes along with that process. I love starfish too much for that kind of abuse.

 

 

Which is why I am thrilled that the tides have turned, so to speak, and have delivered unto our sandy shores more than the normal amount of starfish. I don’t mind picking them up and letting them walk across my hands. I scour the wet sand for that familiar outline, dig with my toe until I uncover it, then bend down and pick it up and show it to anyone who is interested.

Last time I was at the beach, that’s exactly what I did. One day, I took a walk with my teenage daughter along the water’s edge, looking for star shapes in the sand. The teen pointed at something with her toe, so I leaned over. A starfish! I dug at it, perhaps not gently enough, as it was missing one of its limbs or legs or whatever its appendages are called. I scooped it up into my hands, and noticed that not only was it down to four limbs, but one of those four looked injured as well. This starfish was not having a good day, and it was about to get worse.

About this time, a group of ladies called out to us from their beach chairs stationed by the water. “What did you find?” one of them asked.

The teen and I walked up to where they were sitting. I held out my hands for them to see. The starfish had overcome its fear of being seen and was slowing moving along my palm.

“It’s one of them what you call it?” said another. Did I mention we go to the beach in South Carolina?

“A starfish,” I said, with no hint of contempt. “We’ve been finding a lot of them this year.”

As we all gazed down on the four legged starfish in my hands, we noticed that the injured fourth limb had gotten, well, gooey. It started to ooze a little, like when you break a stalk of aloe, and slowly detached itself from the main starfish hub. Then, with the help of the little finger-like protrusions on the bottom side, it walked across my palm and flung itself into the sand in front of the ladies in the beach chairs.

I did what any normal person would do in such a situation. I screamed, loudly. My scream started the chain reaction of an all-girl scream, the six of us sitting and standing, screaming our heads off. Listening to all the screaming made me stop and switch to laughing. So now it was five screaming ladies and one crazy sounding laughing one. It’s a good thing starfish can’t hear.

The leg continued its trek across the sand, its destination unclear to all of us, including itself. It didn’t know where to go, but go it did, until a kindly wave came up and carried off into the ocean.

“Sorry about that,” I told the ladies. “I didn’t really expect that to happen.” They tittered or did whatever polite Southern women do in the company of awkwardness, and I set the rest of the starfish down in the sand away from them. My teen and I said goodbye to them and slunk away.

Just a few more months, and it will be summer again. I for one cannot wait.