Rarely have doing the washing, walking the dog, taking out the recycling, emptying the green waste bin, putting away the washing, cleaning the filters in the dishwasher (more suicidal cockroaches...) and baking little cakes in paper cases seemed so attractive.
I am pleased I walked the dog, though. Apart from finding several lovely pieces of driftwood which I lugged back up the cliff path on the basis that I am bound to find some sort of artistic use for them, I also spotted a collection of shark egg cases.
Further investigation reveals them to be the egg cases of the Port Jackson Shark. This isn't the most handsome of shark species and only grows to about 1.5m and I always thought it flourished in southern Australian waters, but apparently it swims north to breed round about now. I'm not sure if these are egg cases from this year's brood in which case the contents (several baby sharks) have been eaten, or whether they are cases from last year in which case the babies have matured, which takes 10+ months, and hatched.
Whatever the answer, the case are beautiful things in themselves. When I first arrived here I just couldn't believe they were natural! The spirals are so perfect and, when fresh, the whole egg case looks like something that could only be manufactured by machine, not by nature... These have been tossed up on the sand and dried out so they're a bit withered.
Well once I've finished looking down (always a good idea when walking a dog in a place where other dogs walk!) I usually look up, and these clouds rather gripped me when I wandered onto the back deck to take in the afore-mentioned washing.
Those are the strangest egg casings I have ever seen. We see a lot of skate eggs on the beaches here, and they are pretty freaky too. Those you showed looked like black spiral pasta.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious to see what your blog, Rubarb & Ella, will be. I resisted the temptation to be the first follower to it.