Ambergris

Leslie and I took a walk along the edge of our world, as we do most Saturdays. The tide was out.

At the edge of our universe, we witness miracles. Today we saw a 1" horseshoe crab the color of sand, not quite a yearling, making the universal horseshoe crab tracking pattern. I rescued an older one, at least a decade old, flipped upside down, a gull nearby eying its gills.

The beach is littered with blue crabs recently dead, their murderers betrayed by the tracks of webbed feet.


The February wind whipped through our coats.
It's still winter here.



And then I stumbled on this:




Its earthy marine aroma seduces me, and repulses Leslie.

I think I've found a good chunk of ambergris, worth something back in the days before chemists played gods. A decade or two ago, a sperm whale wrestled with a giant squid, perhaps a mile deep, and won. The squid's beak took one last stab at the whale's gut, which formed a protective coating of, well, whale excrement around the squid's last charge.

The beak was eventually expelled, either as poop or vomit, neither method particularly charming, and after years in the sea was tossed up on our beach.

If anyone wants to buy it, let me know. In the meantime, I'll keep sniffing it, drawing up images of death and delight in the deepest recesses of my hind brain.

It was 2 years ago February that I tossed a whale's tooth back in the drink.
I wish I held onto that. Far more interesting than a piece of poop.

Horseshoe crab photo by Leslie, of course.