Shells, shells and more shells. Leroy can’t get enough seashells!

He loves to walk the beaches of Sanibel to collect any type of shell he can find to bring home then clean, oil, categorize and box them all up in his garage. I see Leroy on the beaches quite a bit so he invited me over to see his collection.

He categorizes them at home AND he’s a volunteer at the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum to organize shell collections that are donated to the museum. See? He can’t get enough of shells. I got tickled at this next box since those gorgeous CONES were  mixed together with all of the other ”UNIVALVES”. He said “I have a method to my madness… I just don’t have enough of those categories to have their own box yet since we just moved here 2 years ago”. Yep, that would take a lot of CONES to make enough for their own box… for sure!

 He also likes to collect BEACH BLING! You know I love me some BEACH BLING too. This was my favorite in his collection… a PURSE CRAB that still had all of it’s legs attached.

This is kinda wild- ALLIGATOR GAR  jaw bones…

Before he moved here, he used to collect GEODES from New Mexico…

He gave me a GEODE that was formed inside a fossil shell and a few yard shells. This is the first time I’ve seen a SEASHELL GEODE. Thank you so much for the tour, Leroy, and for my new “sheode”! (FYI-”sheode” is not a scientific name, I made that up- heehee)