An Abundance of Curiosities

When you’re down by the sea, and an eel bites your knee, that’s a moray…

I got excited this week, reading about eel life cycles in An Abundance of Curiosities: The Natural History of North Carolina’s Coastal Plain. So excited, I had to stop and draw a diagram:

Larvae –> glass eels –> elvers –> yellow eels –> silver eels

It sounds like the designated wedding gifts for each decade of marriage. My husband and I are almost at the glass eels stage. I can’t wait for the silver ones.

When you’re married ten years and you get a glass eel, that’s your annivers-ary..

Yet I’ve never seen a real eel, besides Fred, the moray eel at the NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores. Fred lives in the same aquatic habitat as Mr. Porcupinefish, a charismatic fish if ever there was one. Mr. Porcupinefish will swim right up to the tank’s glass and socialize, unlike Fred the eel, who hides in crevices, even though he must know it would make my day to catch sight of him. You’re still my favorite, Fred.

When you like Fred the eel, but he’s always concealed, that’s a moray…

So there I was, riding the high of the eels, when I came upon the Magnificent Ramshorn. What a sexy snail. Magnificent, even. But it’s still a snail, so no one loves it, except one guy, Andy Wood.

Once, in college at UNC-Wilmington, I attended a talk by Andy Wood. He discussed wetlands, and he got on the subject of bugs, and blew my mind.

When you’re a big bug, and you eat other bugs, that’s carni-voray…

That man knew every species of insect that hatched in the waterways of NC. He knew when they hatched. He knew what they looked like when they hatched. He knew what they looked like at each stage of their life cycle, when that stage occurred, how long it lasted, what they ate at each stage, and what ate them. He knew everything worth knowing.

I remember listening to him talk bugs and thinking I could spend my whole life sitting beside a pond and never know half of what he did about the creatures that lived within it. I just found out he wrote a book, and now I’m putting that book on hold through the library. Maybe I’ll learn to speak bug, after all.

When you place books on hold, ‘cause your money’s too low, you’re a poor-ay…

So, of course it was Andy Wood that saved the Magnifiscent Ramshorn snail, a quarter-sized slow slider with a curly shell shaped like a ram’s horn, threatened with extinction due to habitat loss. Wood set up aquaria in his backyard and kept the snails alive through storms and development, maintaining the only known population. They’re now being bred at larger facilities, to be reintroduced, if ever suitable habitat can be found.

I’m not surprised – I could tell by the way he knew every creature in a pond that he’d do whatever it takes to save one if it was going under.

When you save Ramshorn snails, cause you love animals, your name’s And-y…

And what came after the eels and the snails?

Neuse River Waterdogs, aka mudpuppies, salamanders which live in the next county above mine, Craven County, so it’s not impossible that I’ll see them one day. I’d like that. If you’d like to know more about my feelings towards salamanders, read here.

So, if you see a cool eel, snail, or salamander, please tell me about it. Until then,

When you read all my posts, and you like one the most, please share it, ay?…

by Jessi Waugh