She swells sea shells by the sea whore.

I throw less crap out to sea for Otterpop than I used to. She has limited time on her crappy left leg and the more times she dive bombs into waves and sand, ass over tea kettle, face full of sand, all in the name of The Must Have Tennis Ball or Stick or Pinecone or Seaweed or whatever, the more wear and tear we put on that leg. But the slice of light we have left in the sky when we get done at work makes it too tempting not to give the dogs a good run before dark now.

The beach has a million crunched up shells on it at the crunched up shell part. Sand dollars and mussel and sea clams, I guess, sometimes whole or sometimes cracked, lay in the shallows where the tide was before we arrived. I am not much of a lollygagger on the beach, I am one of those scowling brisk walkers, or, if you're not watching, galloping and loud singing classic Sex Pistols tunes. The beach is a place to move forward and far as we can, as close as possible to the surf line. But the shell piles, where gulls drop crab limbs and the empties wash up in the tide, are enticing to sift through to find the biggest ones.

I don't know why I started throwing these for the dogs; it was funny to see them running to find them in the waves, poking around then plucking the big shells out of the water, gingerly running them back to the sand, then dropping them and crunching them into bits with teeth and feet, and really, gleefully smashing to smithereens. Something kind of punk rock about the way they kill the shells. So much for reduce, reuse, recycle. Sorry, clams and homeless crabs but your shell is now smashed to bits and reincarnates as sand some day. Circle of life and all that.

Otterpop is now obsessed. Sticks are so winter 2009, and the shells are Spring 2010 collection. All I have to do is keep finding bigger and better shells, she will never pick them up on her own. She freaks out each time I show her the new one, and then hurl it out to sea. Take THAT, sea shell. Runs her black little heart to the water where it hit, diving her head in to find it. The one and only. If she can, runs it back in and hoards it, until I find the next one. Which WILL be superior. Screaming like the shrillest little anti-christ out there, leaping and flinging and biting, until that clam shell goes back out to sea, and the whole thing starts again.