Wednesday, January 21, 2015

The Velvety Lips Of Doom

Photo by Tim Ryan
People on my Facebook page like to post pictures of birdies. I thought I could trust them to play nicely for a few days while I went off the grid. But when I came back, I discovered that my friends had veered into Giant Clam Territory. Specifically, Julie's fear of stepping in one and not being able to get her foot back. And Tim Ryan's declaration that he had once stroked the velvety lips of a giant clam. From there, the thread veered into the indelicate. Obviously, I needed to look into giant clams. Preferably from a distance.

Clams are weird. They're mollusks, and so are related to octopi and snails and even the snails' homeless cousins, the slugs. Most of them find a spot to live and glue themselves down, like plants. Some of them putt around in the water like goofy little bellows. They have a foot and they have teeth but they don't have a head. Basically, they're just a loogie in a jewel-box.

So, as you might expect of a headless loogie, they have no brain. They do have a nerve network of sorts that allows them to react appropriately to things, but without having to get all philosophical about it. There's really not a lot to a clam, so some of their bits do double duty. For instance, their hearts and kidneys also figure in the reproductive system, and their digestive tract is responsible for writing commemorative poetry for special occasions.

Your giant clam is planning to bulk up to five hundred pounds. He is able to snag a snack here and there as it drifts by, but mostly he's operating a feudal system, luring in algae under the pretense of providing protection, and then letting them do all the farming and paying a massive tribute.

Some clams are more motile, and use their feet to quickly dig themselves into the sand to a depth just a little greater than the length of your arm. But the cockle, which is already sort of cute, for a clam, can actually hop on his foot. He contracts it and then poings right up in the air. Hop hop hop. This is an image I am filing away in my archive of cheer, right alongside Webbed Feet and Vladimir Horowitz playing The Stars And Stripes Forever.

There is a clam that allows a bit of itself to protrude from its shell and take the
shape of a tiny fish, and when real fish come to investigate, it hoses them with a blast of eggs, which settle down inside the fish
and form cysts. Then the baby clams eat up everything inside their cysts until they're big enough to bust out and leave, and the fish is apparently none the worse for it all, although one would think it might feel itchy, or nervous.

None of this applies to the giant clam, however, which is well anchored, living off the profits of its tenant algae's labors, and dreaming of Lloyd Bridges. Lloyd Bridges is famous for a television show called Sea Hunt in which, week after week, he was required to go underwater with just enough air for one fewer person than he encounters. On a good week he gets snapped into a giant clam. You can't blame the clam. Lloyd Bridges was a lot more delectable early in his career than he was when he picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Scientists claim that no deaths by giant clam have every been substantiated, although there is a huge roster of people who have been "lost at sea," so I'm not sure how they can be so certain. Their notion is that a giant clam cannot actually snap shut. Some of them can't shut all the way and none of them close up very fast, so one would have to be very preoccupied indeed not to notice an encroachment.

But "preoccupied" is the least you can say about people who are engaged in stroking the velvety lips of a giant clam.

50 comments:

  1. Those giant clams are obvious evolutionary precursors to Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Once they develop velvety singing voices to go with the velvety lips, we're doomed. Perhaps it will be a just war, though. Humans have certainly eaten a lot more clams than vice versa.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If the Sirens looked like your average geoduck, they'd attract a whole different kind of sailor.

      Delete
  2. I knew you could not write about the giant clam without a "Sea Hunt" reference.

    Interesting and Funny as usual.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In the course of my research (you know all these are well-researched, right?) I discovered that there is a photo of young Lloyd in his skivvy-shorts with a bit of a gap.

      Delete
  3. My husband is involved with a group of farmers that raise and sell smaller versions of this clam for the aquarium trade...and no one has every been eaten by a giant clam that I know about!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. More proof that the Sea Hunt people were way off base.

      Delete
  4. "... their digestive tract is responsible for writing commemorative poetry for special occasions"
    Hahaha!

    Other than your usual output of GREAT lines, such as that one, I must say I tend to feel gaggy when discussing clams or mostly any other underwater life. I don't know why, I only know I do. I trust there are way more people out there who make up for my weakness.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's because it's gooey and drowny down there. I'm with you.

      Delete
  5. "one would have to be very preoccupied indeed not to notice an encroachment."

    I'm sure it happens all the time now, with the rise of iPhone Zombies. I can see them now, walking along the shallow end while they check their FaceBook page... neither seeing nor feeling the giant clam until it's got them firmly clamped in it's shell and is dragging them off on it's little feet. What a wonderful image! The gene pool needs more chlorine....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have to admit I had no trouble visualizing your little scenario. Phone zombies will get picked off one by one, for sure.

      Delete
  6. their digestive tract is responsible for writing commemorative poetry for special occasions. I have known people who wrote those poems, and I wouldn't want to go anywhere near their velvety lips when the poetic muse had them in thrall.
    Another stunner Murr. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used to write commemorative poetry for special occasions. In fact, that's almost everything I wrote for thirty years.

      Delete
  7. They were easiest to find at low tide. Then mom would steam them. If you heard the poetry they were spouting you would have steamed them, too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think my mom would have served them for dinner unless they came in a frozen bag labeled Flav-R-Pac Steamed Clams.

      Delete
  8. I was nearly killed by a geoduck clam.
    I was laughing so hard during the cleaning process I had an asthma attack.
    I don't regret a thing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think you really have to say you were nearly killed NEAR a geoduck clam. It seems unkind, under the circumstances, to put it all on the clam.

      Delete
    2. You saw the pic. It's not what you put on the clam, it's what you take off. What nobody ever seems to notice, though, is the cross section. Oh myyyyyy.

      Delete
  9. Sea Hunt - a ZIV Television Production, and Lloyd Bridges' signature line: "OK, let's go."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, I think it was "OK, let's go. [sploosh]"

      Delete
  10. Summer on Long Island in 1982 I believe it was. Had steamed clams in a restaurant and got a hold of at least one that had gone bad. Never been so sick in my life! It turned out that a lot of clams were causing trouble in NY around then and it turned into an infamous SNL skit about BAD CLAMS!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is one thing I will never experience, because I stay away from Sea Loogies!

      Delete
  11. Gooey-duck! Surely, there must,or at least ought to be, a poem about them?Limerick, maybe...wanders off to sharpen pencil.And wits.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Get back to us. First person with a good gooey-duck limerick wins. Something.

      Delete
    2. The geoduck hides in the sand
      To avoid all the clammers on land
      But to his surprise
      As the tide starts to rise
      He is not as happy as planned

      Delete
    3. YOU WIN!!! You win a copy of A Cup Of Comfort For Cat Lovers (or book of your choice) and a private piano concert!

      Delete
  12. Then,"Blottle, ottle-ottle....blottle, ottle-ottle....blottle, ottle-ottle", etc. Dad and I used to compete to see who could mimic the sound of the rebreather better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Huh. My dad used to read me the Just So Stories, but that's not quite as cool.

      Delete
  13. I take no notice of clams and I'm sure they don't notice me either. I did once read a story where a chapter was devoted to picking clams after a high tide or something; there was a large clam called a Geoduck (or something) and apparently you grabbed it by the neck when it stuck its head out of the sand, then dug like crazy to get under it and lift it out, all while the clam was furiously trying to rebury itself. Apparently one of these "Geoducks" would make enough clam chowder to feed a whole family.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I could make one last a whole year, or until someone threw it out.

      Delete
  14. I saw other commenters referred to geoducks, so they must be real; went to google images....they look like penises!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They're real. They're real big. REAL big, they are. And they have some girth.

      Delete
    2. Size doesn't matter...it's what you do with it. Oh, wait....sorry, I got confused.

      Delete
  15. Smut, smut, smut, from start to finish.

    More, please. I can't get enough of your velvety lips.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Backson, busy backson. I'm applying lip balm to my muse.

      Delete
  16. We got up dark and early to hunt the wily clam.
    I was feeling very surly _ a thing I rarely am.
    And with the standard hurley-burly, we piled into the van.

    The fog was thick as syrup. The fog was thick as soup.
    We heard not one bird chirrup, I think they had the croup.
    "It smells like Eastern Europe," said someone in the troupe.

    I took my spade and bucket, and went out on the sand.
    You call this fun? go suck it. I'm cold and wet and damned.
    I took my pail and struck it, and called out to the clams.

    "Get up you little barsteds. I've come here to devour,
    so leave your little clammy beds. This is your finest hour.
    I want a dozen of you dead, so I can go and shower."

    This ain't the way to hunt clams. This way, nobody wins.
    Clams just don't give a good damn. They kicked me in the shins.
    They dragged me to the waves and -then they threw me in.

    I came back wet and bleeding. I even lost a sleeve.
    My friends were just not heeding. They loaded up to leave.
    I told of the preceding, but no one will believe.


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I want to come to that piano concert.

      Delete
    2. Roxie, I just want to say that the poem is inspired! Thanks so much for posting it! Murr has the best commenters, don't you think?

      Delete
    3. Murr's commenters are half the fun! But then, she gives us such rich material to work with.

      Delete
  17. I'm with Jule. Giant clams have scared me ever since I first a saw a picture of one in our encyclopedia when I was a child. To my mind anything that big living in the deep ocean could surely suck you in whole! Velvety lips, my eye.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Almost everything underwater scares me. I figure they're all trying to take me down. I can't blame them, mind you. We haven't been kind to them.

      Delete
  18. Clams are for peasants. Oysters are royalty.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Give me a nice placid terrestrial herbivore every time.

      Delete
  19. Clams are not for me.
    Nor chewy calamari.
    I don't eat octopi.
    I think I'd rather die.
    And escargot? or crab?
    Or lobster? Not a dab.
    For protein give me please
    Eggs and beans and cheese.

    Okay, it's not as good as scuptor1 or Roxie, but when the lines get in your head, it's impossible to get them out without writing them down.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's GREAT! You guys are tremendous! I need to start a contest. And, also, I agree with all your sentiments.

      Delete
    2. I just this moment realized you asked for a limerick :)

      Delete
    3. Oh, a limerick?
      When Murr is aroused, she will roister,
      and carouse through the city and cloister.
      She'll hollar, "Well this'll
      just not wet my whistle.
      I'll need some more beer to grow moister."

      Delete
  20. Maine fried clams and raw oysters: I love them. What the hell is a face book?
    the Ol'Buzzard

    ReplyDelete
  21. YOU win for using that BC panel...it's been a family favorite for years. We love our clams, and many's the time my Dad (and now, in his absence, my brother) has pried one open, declared "Clams got legs!", slurped it down with satisfaction, and then said "I hope this isn't the one that kills me." True. All of it true.

    ReplyDelete