Midnight Mutterings | Mooney

Anyway, we are sitting there chatting on a perfect day and I am learning a lot about India, where I’ve never been. And according to the few people I’ve met, what India is ‘like’ depends a lot on where you are from. Each ‘section’ of India (I don’t even know the word (? State, province, district) has its own language, script and sometimes religion, and there are 36 of them. I grew up in the South and the accent was different, but the script was the same and we could understand people from other areas of the US, even If they did frequently laugh at our speech. Apparently, in India, the differences are much more dramatic.

But about Mooney: We sat on the beach over an hour with the 1.5 year old baby Dua, who loved the small gravel on my not sandy beach. The tide was out and we were at the high tide line, and all of us were aimlessly sifting through the fine gravel which was damp below the surface.

I was about 8-10 inches deep when I ran into something large in the damp gravel. It was about the size of a tennis ball, and brown. When I cleaned it off it had a large foot and looked like a huge snail. Its foot was much larger than the shell and looked like it could never fit into the shell. I had never seen such a thing, and I never did see a head or antennae. I immediately took a photo and sent it to my neighbor who identified it as a Moon Snail. The first I or anyone I have asked has seen on an Orcas Beach.It must have washed up at high tide and buried itself in the damp gravel. I’m not sure if it could have come to the surface during a high tide and gotten swept out to sea as it was at the very high tide mark.

I have seen two or three empty Moon Snail shells on other Washington Beaches, but this is my first live one. The others on sandy beaches of the Olympic Peninsula and they were empty shells, much lighter in color than Mooney. Mooney was dark brown, though it looks grey in my photo. Also, what looks like an eye is part of the shell.

I consulted AI (or so I believe) and found an article from Discover Wildlife which describes Moon Snails on a Florida beach as pale and much smaller than Mooney. Also, to my surprise, how predatory Moon Snails are. How they drill holes in other mollusks, inject a diluent, and suck out the flesh. But you can read for yourself here:

https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/insects-invertebrates/moon-snail

I’m sure there are lots of Moon Snail articles on the web. But I have to get this to Lin before deadline (for once). And get ready for friends arriving on the late ferry.

So Mooney was a big thrill for me and after a few hours of admiration (and before I read of it’s predatory nature) I released it to the deeper water from a neighbor’s dock.

Wondering if any of you have found a Moon Snail on an Orcas Beach.