Shell Shock

One of the things that I take pleasure in during the summer is fresh fish and seafood. I try to cook lots of clams and mussels because I enjoy the flavor that those bivalves bring to dishes. Coming from towns just off the beaches in Italy, my parents instilled that appreciation in me and my siblings from an early age.

One day I had made some mussels cooked in a little tomato sauce which were quite the hit. After eating the meat from inside, we collected the shells to toss away in a separate bowl. When we cleaned the table, I tossed the shells into the garbage. I did the dishes and then proceeded to watch some television.

After a while I began to hear a clunking sound in the kitchen. Then it stopped. A little bit later, I’d hear something rattling the plastic garbage bag and then it too ceased. Clunk! Yet again. I got up from the living room to see what was going on and when I walked around the corner to the kitchen; there was Foxy with a shell in her mouth.

‘Foxy?’ I said with a high pitch. Knowing she was caught doing something bad, she opened her mouth and dropped the shell on the floor. She hung her head in shame and then sped under the table waiting for her punishment.

I kind of laughed to myself because I realized that she was biting off the little valves that were left on the shells that we didn’t eat. But I couldn’t have her going through the garbage. So I crawled under the table and asked her “Foxy, do you think you are a raccoon? You can’t go through the garbage for snacks and food!” She looked at me and then again looked down with regret.

I went to inspect the garbage can to see how she had gotten in there to collect the shells. She somehow had figured out that the foot pedal, when pressed, would open the garbage can. I examined the garbage can further. I realized that if I unhooked the top, which had a lever that connected to the food pedal, it would make it harder for her to go through the garbage. Problem solved.

I went back to the living room to read the newspaper. After about an hour, I heard clunking again. I got up immediately to go to the kitchen. Foxy was nowhere to be seen. Clunk! “Where is that coming from?” I asked myself.

I walked to the foyer. Under my mom’s curio table, Foxy was spread out on her tummy surrounded by shells. She had a shell in between her paws which she leveraged open somehow and was scraping the valve out of the shell with her teeth. She looked like she had been stranded on a beach if it weren’t for the linoleum in the foyer. I did get mad at her but I had to give her credit for being pretty resourceful. In a way she taught me a lesson on how not to be wasteful. If I had scraped those valves out of the shells, this incident never would have happened at all.