Shell-Abration!

I spent two days this week on the beaches of Sanibel, on of the top ten shelling beaches in the world.  I wasn't disappointed!  On Tuesday Noel and I plopped down in the middle of a huge pile of shells and starting picking out all sorts of beauties.  Just look at that pile of shells - its huge, and deep!  The top layers were pretty picked over, but if you dug a bit, there were all kinds of pretty shells underneath!

 



Shelling was so good, the next day Elaine and I went back and spent hours digging through the piles of shells, finding olives, tulips, conchs, cones and more!

Here's what I found, all cleaned up in some bleach-y water and laid out on our picnic table.  Yes, I know, I'm obsessed....

 

These are augers and cerith shells:

 



 And so many pretty colors of calico scallops.  Some of these will become pendants.

I love it when I find shells that have been drilled (the result some other mollusk trying to get in there to eat the critter) to look like a letter of the alphabet.  Here is "J" for Jason!

These are miniatures, including my favorite wentletrap shells - these are smaller than a 1/2 inch!

Various murex shells on the left, clams on the right:

Oh so many olive shells....

And various interesting pieces and other things found on the beach, including crab shells and a vertebrae from something....

The lightning whelks are so pretty!

 

Tip-toeing through the banded tulips

 

 

 

Now what to do with all these shells, you ask?  Well I plan to keep a handful of my very favorites, then I will send some to Alayna, (my 4 year old "granddaughter"), who keeps the shells I gave her by her bed and likes to look through them as much as I do. Some to my nieces, and others I may photograph and then just give away to all the admirers that have stopped to talk to me about shells at the campground.  I'll need to clear off the picnic table in case a good storm blows in a new batch of shells!!