So Monday, after my button-induced meltdown, I took a restorative, life-affirming walk on the beach. Lately I'm making a point of including this luxury in my routine. All those online dating profiles claim to enjoy seaside strolls, a lot of people between the Left and Right Coasts spend fortunes annually to feel sand between their toes, and here I am growing fungus indoors while a beautiful beach is literally paces away.
This is complicated by the fact that Mr. Sun is not my friend. I avoid direct photon exposure diligently. It's not just the wrinkle/skin cancer issue, although my complexion is the color of mayonnaise and as prone to spoilage in hot sunlight. Even with the SPF 8000 I dab on daily, I have never enjoyed the sensation of anything stronger than the most watery winter sun on skin. Accordingly, I make my beachside pilgrimages at dawn or dusk, or wearing protective gear that looks like the Nomex suit that Woody Allen's LA friend wore in "Annie Hall," if you remember that scene.
So there I am, covered in hats and sunglasses and shawls, breathing the iodine tang of the kelp and salt, among distantly scatttered midweek, midday loafers, fishers, dog walkers and fellow perambulators. I watch the silly sandpipers and scuttling crabs on the rock jetties. My routine is to walk one way to the pier along the waterline, then back along the high tide wrack line, if the water is out. That way, I can find more interesting STUFF to hoard and hopefully use in a nature or rust assembly. I only allow myself one object at a time to keep my STUFF mania in check. The pickings are usually slim and most of the time I return empty handed.
Some beaches in the Carribean and Florida Keys are renowned for a profusion of perfect shells. Some turn out amazing, complicated sculptural driftwood. There's a tiny, secluded beach near Carmel just down the coast from a Gold-Rush-era dump that is regularly covered with what appear to be jewels -- beach glass from all the old bottles after a century of water and sand erosion. It's spectacular.
Here in Bakersfield by the Sea, we get sand, beer cans, cigarette butts, very boring pebbles, kelp remnants and the occasional waterlogged Hello Kitty band-aid. And blots of oil-drilling spillage that make a pair of crusty beach flip-flops mandatory unless you want to turn into the tar baby. Ah, nature. Monday, I had found nothing of interest and was returning across the dry, hot stretch in front of my lane, when something sticking from the sand caught my eye. A deep umber, varigated, triangular flap about a foot across the base and half again as tall, curled over at the top like a jester's cap. Driftwood, I thought, and bent to look at it's peculiar texture.
The smell hit me first. I suddenly remembered an ill-advised breakfast choice in London years ago. Kippers, an acquired taste. Oily, rotten, fishy. Then I noticed that it was really quite embedded, and definitely not wood. I grabbed a piece of legitimate driftwood and prodded gingerly around the base. Whatever was down there was far broader beneath the surface, and within a few inches I saw the telltale boiling rice of maggots. EWWW. There was a great expanse of dead marine something that seemed to extend for quite some distance, with only the tip revealed. Dead whale iceberg. Well, maybe not whale, but porpoise or shark or adult seal. Maybe a small sea lion. How did something so large it become so deeply buried so far up the sand?
Now I love reading about forensics and watching CSI (only the original, the knock offs are shite), but my fieldwork has been limited to identifying the rodent and avian corpses brought in by the cats. I was discouraged from further investigation by the smell and the overall ick factor. I had also forgotten to pack my shovel and yellow crime scene tape. Still, the possibility that some unattended child or dog could have far too much fun unearthing the beast disturbed me. I tossed the dispaced sand back.
I looked through the Government section of the phone book when I got home, certain that a coastal town or county would have some division charged with clearing waterfront carnage. Nothing looked close, so I punted and called City Hall Information. They've come through before and are unfailingly pleasant as they slice through layers of voice mail menu hell. I was referred to Animal Control, and the staffer there said that yes, they dealt with dead animal carcasses. "Dog or cat?" she asked. Think wetter and a whole lot bigger, I said. "We don't deal with any marine life," she said emphatically. I reminded her that life had, like Elvis, left the building, but she had already hung up. I called the Parks Department, but my beach is not THEIR beach, they informed me. I called county and city offices at random. No one gave a shit about the late lamented creature or the potential health hazards created by its partial interment. I called City Hall back and explained the situation. Again, brisk bright and cheerful help came through. She warned me that she would put me on hold while she did the detective work on the other line.
I went back to sorting buttons while "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" segued into an uptempo variant of "Caravan" on Muzak. Ten minutes later, my ace at City Hall was back. She had gone up the chain of authority all the way to the California Coastal Commission. My beast had already been reported five days before, and it was "in process." What does that mean? She laughed ruefully. "You're not going to believe it, but they have to determine cause of death before they can move it, and the state necrospsy [look it up] specialist is very busy lately." I remembered that in the last few weeks, not one but two blue whales, big enough to swallow boatloads of hapless Jonahs, had drifted ashore, dead as doornails and stinking to high heaven. Oddly, both ended up on beaches within a few miles of mine.
This morning, the pathetic flipper still thrusts vainly at the sky, the edges a little more ragged, but just as securely lodged. I suppose dogs and kids are smarter or more oblivious than I thought. And the Coastal Commission sits behind a desk somewhere filling out more forms, environmental impact reports, and funding requests to study the problem. Hey guys, here's the shovel, what's your hurry.
In the meantime, I've figured out that the shores of Bakersfield-by-the-sea may not specialize in glittering treasures, but we've got the dead sea mammal market cornered. Let's alert the Tourist Bureau and see what kind of marketing spin they can put on this!
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