I like to attend the Shell Club Meeting because its
membership includes some of the most interesting group of people I ever have the
opportunity to meet.
Although our common interest is shells, most are broadly knowledgeable
in many areas of nature.
To give you a flavor for the group, Tom Eichhorst, our host,
who sat at the end of the table nearest me, is the editor of the national
shelling publication, “Conchology” and is one of the few experts to whom
questions regarding shell identification are referred to in the U.S. Tom also raises tropical fish and had a lovely
aquarium filled with fan tail guppies and a large 180 gallon tank of African fresh water Cichlids from Lake
Tanganyika. He also keeps a collection of live snakes in his study.
Although now retired, Tom used to fly air
tankers for the Air Force all over the world.
Donnie, Tom’s lovely wife is the cook in the family and she made several
dishes for the party, but the best two were a roasted pork loin with raspberry
sauce and an absolutely killer rum soaked bunt cake.
Tom also is also in a wine club and put out a bottle of 2012 Bacan Sauvignon Blanc from the Couric Valley of Chile, that I had never drunk before.
Sitting on my left was Mike Sanchez, who works for the New
Mexico Natural History Museum. Mike was
telling me and Suzette, who sat on the other side of him, that he just returned
from Kazakhstan, where he attended the launch of the Russian rocket carrying his
relative, Lucca, an Italian astronaut to the Mir Space Station and how Lucca
had done several important experiments including one in which he guided a rover
on the surface of the Earth from the space station in space and also almost
died when his space suit malfunctioned.
Mike made a wonderful guacamole.
Laura and Bill Krausmann
came later bearing a large bowl of warm Thai cellophane noodle, chicken, carrot
and fresh basil salad tossed with a Thai fish sauce made with fish sauce, brown
sugar, a little rice vinegar and a touch of Sriracha and two killer Cabs from
Napa. Bill, who sat down beside me, holds a PHD in Geography
and works for the U.S. Forest Service.
Laura is also extremely smart and is the more avid shell collector. She is also a great cook and her sister and
her sister’s husband own a boutique wine club in Napa, so they always bring
wonderful wines. Only one bottle was
opened and everyone agreed that it was fabulous, a 2007 Esply from Tietjen Vineyard in Rutherford, CA. I think her sister’s company identifies wines
as silver, gold or platinum selections and Laura informed me that Esply was a platinum selection. 
Laura’s
Thai chicken salad was the best dish at the party.
Sitting across the table from me was Bruce Neville. Bruce used to be the Science Librarian for
UNM and now serves in the same capacity at Texas A&M. Bruce is as knowledgeable about all things
scientific as anyone I know, probably because that is his job. I like to throw out questions at these
meetings and the one I threw out this evening was, “How does the evolutionary
process adapt to introduction of new organisms? during a discussion of invasive species, such
as the tumbleweed, African snails and grass carp. Bruce
took the position that species can kill off a host population such as the white
nose fungus that attacks bats and wipes out whole caves full of them. Mike was of the opinion that the successful predatory
organisms are those that do not wipe out all of their hosts. Everyone agreed that there are species being
created and being destroyed all the time.
To prove that point, Mike said the thing that I shall remember most
vividly from this evening, “The average life cycle of most species is around
two million years.” Tom then referred to his experience with the
African Cichlids. He said, there are peninsulas
of land around Lake Tanganyika that form bays and the variation of a species of
Cichlid from on bay to the next is such that those nearest each other can
interbreed with each other but as you go farther away from one fish’s habitat
they cannot breed with each other and therefore are different species. Wow!
Where are the Neanderthals?
Some of them are within us. That raises
an entirely different level of discussion.
Inter-speciation, which is an important issue in shell
identification. When a species goes
extinct, are parts of it that have been subject to interbreeding with similar
species still in existence? What does extinction of a species mean under those
circumstances? The other member of the club, Pat, was also in attendance. I think Pat, who is our oldest member, was in the military in the Pacific where she learned how to scuba dive. Pat has live collected shells from all over the Pacific and when she lived in Florida she used to visit the shell deposits of fossils and collected lots of fossil forms of shells. Fossil shells are also a large body of shells that are collected. Pat gave me several Cretaceous cowries from her collection. Several years ago she distributed lots of her collection to members of the club. I picked some of them and they all had beautifully notated labels describing the location and circumstances of their collection.
Instant Salad: We got
a late start. At 5:30 I called Tom and
asked if anyone was bringing salad and he said, “No”. So I said I would bring salad. I then asked Tom, ‘When does the party start?
and he said, “At 6:00.” I said, “I will
get there as soon as I can” and asked if they had any balsamic vinegar to which
he answered, “No.” Suzette and I then went
into emergency salad making mode. We
ran to the garden. I picked a basket
full of lettuces, a cucumber and several onions.
Suzette picked an onion and several carrots. I then washed and spun lettuce while Suzette cleaned
and chopped up the onions, a different cucumber and carrots and put them in the large teak salad
bowl. I then threw the lettuces into the
bowl and then started making a salad dressing.
I took a 12 ounce mason jar and poured about 2 Tbsp. of Kirtland Balsamic
Vinegar into it and then 1 tsp. of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard and a dash of salt
and white pepper. I then ran to the
garden and plucked a sprig of tarragon and plucked leaves from it and put them
into the jar and then added several pours of Kirtland Extra Virgin olive oil,
shaking the jar between each to emulsify the dressing. Finally when the jar held about 8 ounces of
dressing, it tasted fine and I ran to the basement and grabbed a bottle of 2007
Eguia Rioja Reserva and a bag of pear tomatoes, a large avocado and three fresh
red tomatoes from our garden. Bruce is
allergic to tomatoes. We grabbed the PPI bread pudding made with zucchini bread and jumped in our car
at around 5:45 and drove to north Rio Rancho where Tom and Donnie live and
arrived at around 6:20. When we arrived
Suzette chopped the avocado and put it in the salad bowl and then chopped the
tomatoes and put them in a separate bowl and I dressed both with the dressing.
Tom made me a rum and coke with a Mexican Coke and while Suzette
and Donnie were prepping the food I looked at some of Mike’s and Tom’s newer shells
they had put on the table. Mike collects
lots of Volutidaes and he had a new Duponti that was beautiful. To, collects everything but has a
particularly strong collection of Carrier shells. The one he had on the table tonight is a
variety that puts a living sponge on top of its shell. I
would guess that among the five members of the club other than me their
collections contain about 50,000 shells.
My collection of cowries includes only about 300-400 shells. There are about 220 different distinct species
of cowries and I probably have about 205 of the species (Some that were
available are now unavailable and may be extinct) and are therefore so costly
as to be too expensive for me. Most
species also have several sub-species and I have a few of them. Shells are interesting. They are beautiful treasures of nature but there
is not a large market for them and therefore it is hard to value them. The most I have ever paid for a cowrie shell
is $4,000.00.
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