I Never Knew...

Learn something new everyday!

As today had some sunshine, albeit not WARM and sunny, still enough to get my feet wishing for sand to walk on. Forty minutes over the mountains and I arrived. First I made a stop at my favorite collectibles shop. It's a collective with many dealers and such a great place to browse. I always find lots of inspiration here:

Beauty at a price, unfortunately!

Onward to the beach. In keeping with this blogs name, I brought along a picnic! Just a simple sandwich in a bag, but when one is ocean side it is an ABUNDANT PICNIC for sure! Way too cold for sitting and reading so I wasted no time getting to my walk! Oh, yeah.. so here we go - the title subject today: I never knew; are you aware that a sand dollar is first a living object that has hair? I think it's rather like fuzz myself, but when I looked it up on ASK it was called hair. Anyway...here's the shell I found today

The image on the left is the bottom of the sand dollar. It was really fuzzy. That indicated that the object is alive. Yet when I read further, it was stated that the hair (fuzz) wears off and the dollar becomes totally white like bone when it is dead. On the right I've marked it with an arrow. Glad to know the one I picked up was no longer alive. Wouldn't be nice to take a living creature off of the beach.
I collect shells, glass and objects every single time I go to the beach. Can't help myself! I'm even a bit nutty in that I can't walk along the beach and step on shells. Sort of like the game that children do walking on the sidewalk missing every crack so they won't "break their mother's back". Hearing the cccrr-runch saddens me. I may have just smashed someones ultimate treasure!



the inside of a broken sand dollar




some of today's loot

 Okay now that I've done my best Bill Nye the Science Guy impression by giving a lesson in sand dollar life ~
I shall make a dent in that huge stack of reading material and hope to get sleepy!