Today Allison and I drove for Andy’s Science School field trip to Wood Neck Beach. In grand CSS tradition we did not know if both of us would be needed to drive until we got there to find out. Turned out that they could use our help so I drove three of the boys from Andy’s class and Allison drove Andy and Evie and another kid from class. All good kids in these classes. So smart and inquisitive. We got to Wood Neck Beach which has a marsh area and we explored the marsh looking for different specimens for the tank back at Science School.
A Cape Cod Marsh has many different parts to it including some shoe sucking muck. One of the boys who rode with me lost a shoe in the muck and Andy got sucked into quicksand. Luckily Allison sprung in to action to pull him out while I laughed and took photos. Such a good dad.
One of the coolest things that we saw was a Mantis Shrimp. The kids even caught the thing twice. It was the biggest thing in the marsh and you could see it coming along a mile away. At about six inches long it looks like a lobster with no giant claws. There are some Mantis Shrimp like the peacock Mantis Shrimp that have these club-like appendages that they can use to fire off an insanely strong punch that can shatter shells of their prey. They can break glass with the punch too because the water around where the punch lands boils instantly, like the heat of the sun hot. It is crazy. I do not think this was that particular type of Mantis Shrimp, however. It was pretty cool to see, though.