March 11 - Fish Graveyard

I’m in Naples, Florida with my boyfriend and his family for the weekend. His sister, Claire’s, primary wish of today was to take a beach walk before dinner time. She figured out the pier she wanted to go to, a great taco place to hit up after, and routed us the entire way.

We pulled up to the pier and found parking without a problem. Everything seemed to be going our way. We walked the 100 yards to the beach entrance, oo-ing and ahh-ing over the beachside mansions, picking out our favorite ones. (Claire and I settled on a very quaint yellow shingle style. When I say quaint, it’s probably still over 5mill, but compared to the others around it, she was very modest.)

As soon as we hit sand, we all marveled at how soft it was beneath our feet. Soft like buttah! their dad proclaimed.

We all slowly made our way down to the ocean, pointing out new favorite mansions, proclaiming at how well everything had been built back up post hurricane. And then we saw them.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dead fish.

Puffer fish, minnows, huge 10 inch long fish that I can’t place a name to. All scattered along the edge of the water.

People either seemed to ignore them entirely, picking their way around their sad, slimy carcasses, or chose to walk up on the soft, fish-less sand as opposed to down on the harder area where the water had reached.

We all mine-fielded around the scattered fish for a bit, eyes down and careful, less amused by the beach-side mansions now that our primary needs had shifted: don’t step on a fish.

We made it a good couple hundred yards before it happened.

Yeeeeeeowwwww! Claire jumped up onto the soft sand… but not before I saw a fish quite literally explode all over her lower leg. Don’t look at it! Her mom cried… but not before I had already looked down to inspect its remnants.

It’s safe to say that for the rest of our sunset beach walk, I stuck to the soft, carcass-less sand.