Last night’s mango sky brought out a mango tinted HORSESHOE CRAB along with several different mango colored seashells as well. Check out this BEAUTIFUL CRASSATELLA (9 o’clock) Clark found last night at Bowman’s beach.
Near the east end of Sanibel the night before, I found lots of sweet mini shells. WENTLETRAPS filled the inside of a mango colored COCKLE SHELL and BUTTON SHELLS, BUBBLES, mango tinted MUREXES, DRILLS and CONCHS filled the cup of a DOSINIA. I can’t even believe I saw the tiniest of 2 DOVE shells, a RICE OLIVE and a new find for me…. a BROWN-TIP MANGELIA (Kurtziella atrostyla).
I looked through my loose change to take a photo of a coin to show just how tiny this shell was and I found a wheat penny- perfect! How in the world did I ever see this little magnificent shell? So happy I did! And yes, it has little “mango” accents (instead of boring brown) on it too.
Okay… what is all this mango stuff about, you ask? I’ve been sorta obsessed with our MANGO TREE this year. It has loads of juicy delicious mangoes hanging from every branch but we try to wait until they are fairly ripe before we pick them. But…. every morning we find half eaten mangoes on the ground. Grrrrr. Some critter was making a mess of our luscious fruit and I wanted to know exactly what critter was feasting on them. I had an idea the animal but I bought I critter cam to see for sure. hahaha I know- a little crazy but it worked! In this next photo, you can see in the far left that this evil cute little RACCOON was up on his hind legs about to pick that mango. Shooooo!
Then his little RACCOON bff joined in on a little tango for the mango madness smorgasbord.
And then…. O.M.G. I caught a COYOTE in my backyard this morning on camera! Wow! There have been COYOTE sightings on Sanibel since 2011 and we’ve seen a few around the islands but I’ve never gotten a photo of them and I sure didn’t know they were roaming around in my backyard at 4:15am. I’ve never heard of a local COYOTE hurting a human but I’m just very happy that my little DustBall and PuppyCat kitties are safe inside and NEVER go outside.
Of course I wanted to name it (not sure if it’s a girl or boy), but I still haven’t come up with a name yet… Wildie Coyote? Tootie Fruitie Coyote? Mango Rambo? LOL Whaddaya think?
Life on Sanibel… day and night, there’s always something “wild” happening.
Join me on an iLoveShelling Adventure! For more info CLICK HERE (I’m working on new dates for season- I should have those up soon!)
PS- I’m hoping its running much smoother now with most of the kinks worked out for the new site design. I’m not done reorganizing the categories menu yet either, but I’d love feed back if you think the dropdown menu is easier to look through too now. It was a mess- eeeeek- sorry!