Sea Slug Christmas

Last Christmas the Professor took me to Laguna Beach see the Pacific Ocean. It was the first time I’d ever gotten my hands wet in any ocean other than the Atlantic. He laughed when I told him last year that I’d only ever seen sunrises over the ocean and longed to see a sunset. He couldn’t quite make out what the difference was. Sunset afficionados know of what I speak, though. It was a wonderful Christmas.

We wanted to recapture something of that first Christmas we had together this year, so Christmas morning saw the Professor and I setting out south to find tide pools to play in. This time we stopped at Cyrstal Cove State Park on a whim. It was a great whim. Christmas definitely exceeded all expectations.

We walked down a long path that slowly wound down to the sea. It went through sand dune lands that reminded me much of Cape May in New Jersey. That bubble of familiarity was abrubtly broken, however, when a roadrunner broke from the grasses ahead to our left, ran ahead of us on the trail, and then ducked over to the right. “It’s a ROADRUNNER! I kept saying excitedly over and over again. “A ROADRUNNER!!!!!!!!!!!” The Professor treated me as an endearing, if somewhat feeble-minded child, mentioning that he didn’t think there were any roadrunners in this area. Meanwhile, I ran ahead, hoping to get another glimpse of the bird. Sure enough, we both saw it clearly as it ran up a path before finally ducking back into tall rushes. The remainder of my trip down to the beach I kept babbling “Roadrunner, roadrunner, roadrunner!” while the Professor made a superhuman effort not to laugh at me.

We were lucky in our timing. We arrived at 11:30, and low tide was a 12:30. We spent an hour or so climbing rather sharp and treacherous seeming rocks, peering down clefts and into puddles to see what had been stranded as the sea exited stage left.

There were the usual assortment of mussels, hermit crabs, tiny little shrimp that I’ve seen before, along with more exotic critters like anemones and sea urchins.

I was in Nirvana, and hadn’t noticed that The Professor had wandered off in a different direction until I noticed him trying to signal me while at the same time attempting not to attract any of the other beachcombers about. When I got close enough he stage whispered to me “Slug!”.

Sure enough, there in the pool in front of him was my very first nudibranch. I studied about them in zoology, I’d seen them in all the stupid coral reef programs on PBS, but there in front of me was a living, creeping SEA SLUG! Both The Professor and I went on a photo-fest, trying to get pictures of the critter. At one point I picked it up (solid, like a slightly overfiled water balloon, and yes, a tad slimy) and put it on the dry ground, where it stayed balled up and sullen. I picked it up and put it back in the water, and it gradually stretched out to about 8 inches and continued crawling upon its merry way. Soon after we found yet another sea slug, slightly more colorful and perhaps an inch or two longer, in another pool a bit further inland.

The Professor is going to have to go far next year to beat this year’s Christmas!

Later, towards dark, we traveled north and stopped off at a bird sanctuary I unfortunately do not remember the name of. I’ll have to look it up when The Prof brings the California map back home. There I delightedly pointed out white pelicans, cattle egrets, great egrets, pintails, ruddy ducks and coots while The Professor attempted to not get caught rolling his eyes at me. One great egret caught my eye; its reflection in the water as the sun was setting was striking.

As horrid as Christmas Eve was, that was how good Christmas day was for me. My deepest thanks to The Prof for giving that day to me.