Sunday, June 22, 2008

Day at the Beach

Since Nicholaus accidentally erased this at the bottom, it is now at the top. This is just a cute picture of him avoiding having his picture taken, while at the beach.
So Nicholaus and I decided to drive down to the beach today. It is about a 40 minute drive from where we live, and we were really excited to get there. We arrived immediately dissapointed to find that this was not much of a beach at all. We were soon surprised to find many dead jelly-fish skewed all over the sand! For some reason, there were hundreds of these jelly-fish that were swimming to shore. This is a picture of one of them that was still alive. Don't know what kind it is, but we thought it was pretty cool.
Dead Hela-monster? Okay, so lets have a little zoology lesson . . . What looks like metal, and is related to pre-historic tarantulas? Ding! According to Nicholaus, a giant fossil on the beach. Actually though, it is called a Horse Shoe Crab!!! How cool is this!?!? I have always wanted to find one ever since my zoology class in High School!! As we were getting ready to leave this dissapointment of a beach, I stumbled across what looked to be some metal helmet in the sand (with a tail) . . . Anyway, looking closer, we discovered what it was. Check out the cool pictures below to see more of what it looks like!
At first, there was no way I was going to touch this thing! And besides, we thought it was dead anyway, so we just turned it over with a rock.
When it started to twitch and hover away, we realized, HOLY COW, THIS THING IS ALIVE!!!
So now I will take over on the typing (yeah, it's me, Nicholaus). Emily soon found that this helmet, like any other animal, was something she HAD to touch with her hands. This picture is her showing it like a dog at the prize show.
This one is the thing sticking it's butt at me, with the tail going for my eye!
Emily felt guilty after getting him out of his sand-station, so we decided to relocate him for a brief moment in the water (mainly for a bath, to get a better look at him). These guys do belong in the water too, so don't worry - we didn't hurt him.
After getting a good look at this guy, we lovingly named him Henry, the Horse Shoe Crab. It doesn't really work because we didn't keep him, but if we ever find him again, we'll see what happens. . .
His tail is going crazy there - I think he was finally starting to get angry! At first, it was wagging more like a dog's tail, but then he started to move his crab/pre-historic-spider legs and tail in a frantic way. So we finally let him go back to a peaceful life, face-down in the sand and water.
My cute wife standing on the beach :)

4 comments:

Phillip said...

Wow!!! What a great way to re-start your blog-posting! Exciting stuff, and I'm definitely jealous. I would have loved to see that in real life.

Now, just don't wait for another two months before posting again. :)

Phillip said...

Holy Cow~ you are very BRAVE. I would've just turned the thing over and once having discovered the thing ALIVE... I'd have run as fast as I could in the other direction. But that certainly was pretty cool to see you holding. Crazy!

Amie said...

Whoops, that 2nd comment was me, Amie. As is this comment. Re-read it to make sure you know it was ME that was saying that last bit. :D

chris and lynden said...

i'm so glad you two got to spend some fun time together. i remember being on a beach covered in jellies... that can be pretty dangerous (but i guess they probably don't sting when dead, huh). i think jellies are the coolest. i took some awesome jelly photos at the new england aquarium. the crab is a bit too creepy for me though.
lots of love, mom