Ahhh the glamorous life of a mermaid, getting caught sniffing jars,being chased by crabs and raccoon rescues. I guess I can start with the sniffing jar incident. I have a werido habit of collecting shells, bones, feathers, rocks, and other random things I find along my adventures. Obviously being a mermaid, I find lots of interesting things daily that I bring back to the shop. We have even begun to make a collection of all the cool things that end up on the launch. I was asked by a local if someone had lost their phone, he handed me an old child’s phone that had been in the ocean for quite some time, which goes perfect with the hotel key I found a few days before.
As one can probably imagine, dead things that come from the ocean don’t smell very pleasant. So, there is where my little collecting of dead ocean things habit can become a little stinky. Typically, when I bring a cool shell, or some other type of treasure back to the shop after a tour I set them in the sun for a few days to them dry out and lose the stench of decay. Well, this last week was windy, so we were closed, and I have made it a habit of putting little shells and such in the tip jar for safe keeping. I may have put a small little infant micro horse conch and a sea urchin in the jar that were not quite stench free. Resulting in them sitting for a week in a sealed glass jar, in the dark. I opened the jar, took out the shells and finished setting up the table. After I bit, I began to smell something. We do work at a fishing pier so there are all kinds of interesting smells throughout the day. But this was clearly close and a little on the pungent side, so what do I do? Pick up the tip jar and put it to my face to smell it just as someone walks by. I didn’t see them, until I heard them say “sniff test”. All I could do was laugh,
Moving on to another day of 'did that just happen", I was pinched and chased by not one, but two crabs. Getting a little pinch here and there by crabs is not too unusual, I do walk around bare foot in an estuary so expecting anything different would just be silly. But, to start my morning off with a pinch putting in the first boats followed by an hour later stepping on one, getting pinched again and then it is chasing me down like I stole its snack pack is a whole other vibe. It was straight out of an old looney tunes cartoon; mermaid being chased by angry crab. Absolutely one of those things you must see to believe, and my guest on my tour got to witness it. No, I didn’t squeal or run, whoever says that is making up mermaid tails. Well, I may have squeaked and ran, but I didn’t squeal, totally different. Shhhhhh
Aaron followed up my sniffing jars and crab attacks with being a hero for the day. Raccoons are a mammal that have made themselves quite at home in the estuary, especially at the fishing pier. Its basically like an all you can eat free buffet. Rockey is our local mama we have grown found of. She spends her time watching and waiting for food to steal, with little ones following close behind. So this morning when we arrived at work to have a volunteer for the Peace river wildlife rescue tell us there was a raccoon on their pier she has been trying to rescue was quite worrisome. I walked with her down to the pier discussing the details she had about how the raccoon ended up on the pier, walking the pirate plank. When we got to the pier, I seen who I thought was rocky the racoon on the outside ledge of the pier about to fall in. The raccoon was not taking any food, looked very afraid and I didn’t want risk it falling off the pier so I went back to get Aaron, I trust his tinkering brain to come up with a solution that keeps everyone safe. We all went back down and tried our luck again with the very scared racoon, but by this time we had lots of customers showing up for our 10am tour. So, I headed out to do the mermaid life thing. While I was on tour Aaron earned hero status again, he got the little critter into the crate safe and sound. The next time you are down at the shop for an adventure be sure to ask him about saving the raccoon!