My sister Delana has a game she likes us to play, and it’s particularly fun at this time of year. Basically the game involves scouring the beach for the most eew-inspiring object. The winter/spring storms at the beach turn the aquatic world upside down and creatures from the deep wind up a lot closer to the sun and a great deal less wet than they are comfortable with, and this takes the game into a completely new dimension.
Last week we had the most destructive storm recorded in Adelaide, I’m guessing that the damage wasn’t just on land by the number of dispossessed sea beasties at the shoreline. Amongst the traditional purple starfish, mounds of different varieties of seaweed, sea sponges and random bits of coral were scores and scores of “sea cucumbers” – strange greenish slug-like things that give me the absolute horrors. My slug-phobia (it’s true, I have an irrational fear of slugs) goes into overdrive when I stumble accross one of these beasties. O_o
There was another, new and more disturbing creature amongst the flotsam. A hybrid jelly-brain. I’ve never seen one of these things before, but apparently there’s lots of them out doing whatever brain-jellies do in the same water I like to swim in, as dozens of them were strewn accross the sand. They were about the size of a US silver dollar or and Australian 50 cent piece, roundish with two hairy nobules at 12 o’clock and three o’clock, clear on the outside to expose a pink wiggly brain-like middle. Maybe they were intestines and other digestive bits? :yuck: Only the marine-biologist could say.
I’m debating taking my camera with us next time. I wonder, do you really want to see the winners, or is it gross enough just to read about? Also I feel a bit strange publishing images of these nearly-dead or recently-dead creatures. It seems a bit sacreligious somehow.

In other news Luck Pig opens tonight. The Magnificent Violet has created lots of kooky lucky badges which we will be giving away at the opening. You know you want one.