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Illustration by Mary Kirkpatrick
Turquoise rollers heaved, then pounded the shore, foaming at its edge. I was walking in the shallows, feeling the undertow draw the sand from around my feet, knowing if I went deeper, I’d be pulled over. The sun was low, the palms glossy and graceful under its late heat. In the clear, tepid sea, I noticed a perfect shell.
It wasn’t large: about three inches long and conical, brown and white striped, with small spikes around its upper circumference. At its top were elaborate swirls, like a crown. The interior was a vibrant, glossy orange. Any shells are rare on our Florida Atlantic beach unlike the other side, the Gulf side, which has masses of fascinating shells on its white beaches. That’s a shell-seekers’ paradise.
I collect shells. Exquisite artifacts of the deep, they have myriad convolutions and colours. They represent the feminine. Think of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus from 1485. Their attraction to all cultures is ancient and embedded. Shells fulfill multiple uses from musical instruments to utilitarian vessels. They can be tools, religious symbols, objects of trade and decoration in floors and murals.
People display tall glass vases filled with gorgeous shells, purchased from home decor stores. I scatter white ones all over my garden instead of mulch.
I scooped up the shell, then skipped across the sand, rinsing my feet from the tap at the entrance to the beach, then sliding them wet into my flip-flops, and started for home. Feeling real pleasure, as if I’d found something valuable, I kept turning the shell over and over, admiring it, when I saw something move inside. A soft bulge emerged and when I touched it, it recoiled. It was alive!
“Oh well,” I thought. “It’s basically just a snail. I’ll leave it out in the sun, and it will dry up and die.”
I am an animal lover … a ga-ga one … although I prefer elephants, whales and tigers to less numinous mammals. In my lifetime, I’ve had a dozen dogs, little and huge and at least that many cats. Once I fed a rat living in my kitchen cupboard. I’m also a hypocrite. I eat meat. In fact, I have held a newborn April lamb in my arms whose flesh I likely ate in the fall.
Arriving at my house, I put my shell, alive with a critter, atop a louvered armoire in our carport. I kept checking it, poking the thing. Always, it retreated. I researched shells and determined it was a conch, (pronounced “conk” after the French “La Conque Coquille”).
Conchs are male and female, and female conchs are fertilized internally. A newborn conch is the size of a pencil dot. At three months, about an inch long, it drops to the ocean floor and goes through a metamorphosis, emerging as a tiny version of its later self. Miraculously, a conch never leaves its shell but enlarges the shell as needed.
At three years, that “pencil dot,” can be magnificently huge, more than a foot long, with a deep, polished orange interior. Conch chowder, conch fritters and conch seviche are chewy delicacies.
Conchs are endangered. It’s illegal to take a live one. (I learned this later.) Still, you see piles of “trophy” shells in shops all along the roadside in the Florida Keys.
By the second day, the conch in my shell finally made its appearance: a long, flexible extension of brown flesh that looked like pulling taffy. There were several protuberances, including one that was distinctively scythe-shaped, looking like a beak. It was too small for me to see its eyes, but large enough to seem assertive. It stretched and searched the air with surprising elasticity and determination.
This repulsive creature inside its distinctive home … my treasure … suddenly took on a palpable, vibrant personality that appealed to me. I felt it was suffering.
But I abandoned it, telling myself over and over, “It’s a snail! It has no brain, no heart.” Then I began to think about fear of death and the desire to survive. My conch was in misery. It had clearly demonstrated its will to live. It reminded me of those pathetic, abused animals in the Humane Society advertisements.
I couldn’t sleep all night thinking of the poor thing. But I wanted the shell. I had found it. It was a prize.
The next morning, the conch was extended as far as it possibly could be, active and taut. Gesturing. In fact, it was halfway curved around the shell, as if it were trying to grasp it to crawl out.
I couldn’t stand it. What right had I to annihilate a spirited creature, straining to survive? It obviously had a powerful purpose. So, what if it had no brain, no heart? I sensed it had a soul, this persistent sea-snail, brilliant enough to create its own spectacular home.
On the way to the beach, a 10-minute walk, the critter was stretching fully out, dangling from the body of the shell. I hurried, thinking it might die in the heat on the way.
Once there, the sun was white-hot, the sand shimmering. The water was that fathomless aquamarine only a tropical ocean can be. I considered cupping the shell in my hand with genuine affection, as a tentative farewell. But I tossed it into the sea, watching it sink into the depths.
And I felt a sense of loss and joy.
Eve McBride lives in Port Hope, Ont.