Clams

Today's pointless photo is, of course, not of clams. It's also not of snow, because I didn't get around to taking any new pictures this weekend (yet). I did, however, sort of get around to starting the lily drawing I was thinking of doing yesterday. Sort of. As in, I did start one but it was after fooling around doing other things for quite a long time. Eventually I did find a lily to doodle (well, a picture of a lily) and got a bit of a start, but by then it was too late to really bother finishing. I'll have another whack at it this morning and if it turns out worth looking at in the slightest I'll post it on the other blog.

You needed to know all of that, yes.

----------

Now, clams. I had a slightly odd dream about clams last night. My mother had made breaded clams (breaded including the shell. I did say that this was an odd dream) and was watching to see if I liked them. So, naturally, I had to try to eat the clams.

There was more, but the clams were the weirdest part for a few reasons. First of all, my mother never made clam anything. Heck, I'm from Alberta. We have cows, not clams. I didn't grow up with fresh seafood readily at hand, so naturally it never became a big part of my life. It's not that I mind eating fish or other sea creatures; it's just that it's not something that normally comes to mind for me.

Notice how I said fish rather than clams in that last sentence? Yeah. That was on purpose. I don't eat clams. That was the other weird part of the dream. The fact that I'd be contemplating eating clams at all, even if my mother cooked them.

I don't eat clams. Is it because I don't like clams? Not a clue. I couldn't tell you for sure if I'd ever had a clam. I've had oysters (breaded, strangely enough. But not in the shell) and didn't especially care for them, but as a zoologist I can tell you that oysters and clams are, in fact, not the same thing.

They do, however, have something in common, and it's why I'd prefer not to eat either of them. Funnily enough, it even has something to do with the "as a zoologist" part.

Ever since university I've had a great deal of difficulty eating bottom-dwelling filter feeders. To my mind anything that sits on the ocean floor and feeds by sucking in water and filtering out whatever happens to be floating around in it at the time is very likely to be feeding on some of the GROSSEST THINGS POSSIBLE. We're doing a good job of mucking up our oceans, especially on the coastlines, and a lot of those shellfish are living in places where pollution is all too easily available.

Yep, I have more than a bit of a mental block about filter feeders. For the same reason I avoid eating any of the baleen whales, you know. No whale steaks for me, boyo.

I do have a couple of reluctant exceptions on the filter-feeding menu, though. Reluctant because in my heart of hearts I know that they're no different in their likelihood to pick up things that I'd rather not have in my diet, but they're so good that I had to find a way to rationalise them to myself.

The exceptions to the rule, then, are shrimp and scallops.

And how can I make them exceptions?

Well... shrimp aren't strictly benthic, so that's easy. They're not simply sitting on the bottom sucking in all of the crap around them; they're... erm... only usually sitting on the bottom sucking in all of the crap around them. Um. Yeah. I didn't say that this was a perfect rationalisation. Hey, at least shrimp can move around to a different place if the crap around them is particularly crappy, right?

And as for scallops? At least they swim. Clams don't, as far as I know (hey, I'm a mammalogist, all right? I had one entire invertebrates course in university, and that was far too many years ago for me to remember many details). They swim, and you generally only eat the muscle around here as opposed to the whole animal. Yes, I realise that the muscle's as likely to be polluted as the rest of the animal, but somehow it makes it easier for me to deal with.

And... you needed to know that? Maybe?

Well, I suppose you might if you were taking me out for supper. Especially on a Friday.





I really have no idea what I'm blathering on about at this point, ok? I fully admit it.

Guess I should go back to working on my lily then?







Yeah.