Archive for Paper Fig Egg Case
Paper Valentines from Sanibel
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I love paper Valentines. Finding a PAPER FIG Valentine on the beach is even better! Okay, I didn’t find these laying on the beach just like this (especially with a red background- heehee) but I found some very cool Beach Bling that I could not identify…
It looked like the gulf had a picnic and the left over corn cobs washed up on the beach. I saw them littered from Middle Gulf Drive to Blind Pass the last two days. They may look like corn cobs but I knew they were mollusk egg cases.
They also look like WHELK egg casing coils that have been chopped every couple of inches. So which shell laid these eggs?
Dr Jose Leal of the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum identified these as ATLANTIC FIG SNAIL eggs. Oh Cool! PAPER FIGS! Thanks Dr. Leal!
I loooove to notice different things that wash up on the beaches…. so this tickled me to learn what one more mollusk egg casing looked like.
But wait! While I was inspecting one of the PAPER FIG EGG CASES, I saw something else in between the individual egg “disks”…. more eggs! Another mollusk laid eggs on the FIG egg case. Wow!
The PAPER FIG egg casings were very sandy but you can see the orangish rows containing little babies from another shell. I have no idea which shell laid these eggs but if you know, please share!
There were so many empty FIG shells lying on the beach too. Annette S. had commented on my last post about how many she found as well. There were oodles of them!
I had to add this photo again of a live PAPER FIG from a previous post…
This photo fascinates me to see how far this guy is out of the shell…
This is the mollusk peaking out of the aperture. And notice, these guys don’t have OPERCULUMS…
The shells are so fragile, most often they are found broken on the beach but when they are empty and whole, Clark can’t help but pick them up. This is one of his fave shells to collect so here’s a PAPER FIG Valentine for my honey and all of you other PAPER FIG lovers out there!
