Melbourne

We went to Abner's house in Palm Bay and had a barbecue. That was great. We met Miss Pauline, the woman Abner lives with (not that way). She is native to Florida and told us how it was way back when. She lived on a farm in Hialeah and had 65 cows to milk every morning starting at 2:30am before going to school. Hey, you can't walk to school 6 miles, uphill, in 3 feet of snow in Florida! Actually it was quite an education and I cannot imagine living here with no air conditioning. She amazed me with her knowledge of snakes (that's rare!). She knows what she's talking about and when she was young she used to go see Bill Haast of Miami Serpentarium fame and he would teach them (the kids who would go with her) all about the snakes.

She also has what is most likely the largest and most diverse private collection of seashells in Florida. She's been collecting them since she was a child and she has some amazing shells! Most of her collection were collected in Florida and I'll tell you what, you can spend a lifetime looking these days and you won't find most of the beautiful shells she has that she collected long ago. With dredging, pollution, dying reefs, and who knows what else, most of what you find are very common and mostly broken shells these days. She also has some egg casings from a conch. I had no idea there were egg casings. They develop inside them and come out a hole when they are ready. Her casings were dried, of course, but still had the little shells inside and they would fall out as you shook it. They are so tiny. I took some pictures of a small part of her collection and you can see them here. You'll have to sign up with Ofoto if you're not already, but it's free.

We went to Melbourne beach afterward and James just loved it. It was such a beautiful day, it didn't rain at all, although it looked like it might be coming. You couldn't ask for better.