Mollusk Noir

On weekends, I front a punk band called the Dead Cousteaus. On weekdays, I’m a private investigator.

So, on Monday morning, I was in my office nursing a bottle hoping to ease out of my weekend, but the shadow of a stacked broad crossed my desk. She smelled of mollusks and trouble. 

The “stacked” part of her shadow was two buckets of live snails. I said, “Whoa, toots, you’re packin’ a helluva load of eroded periwinkles (Littorina keenae).”

“My son was kidnapped by an English punk rock band. They demanded eroded periwinkles as ransom. But I want these bastards brought to justice. I hear you’re just the man.” 

“Take it easy there, sister. This case could be right up my alley — for my standard fee, of course. Ya see, my band toured the U.K. in the ’80s. Snails belonging to the genus Littorina are known as ‘winkles’ in England, where they are a working-class delicacy. Ex-pat British punks might pay big simoleons for fresh winkles,” I said. “Because periwinkles seal themselves with their trapdoor-like operculum, they can survive months out of water in temperatures over 100 degrees, so they’re easily transported. But there’s no commercial or recreational fishery for them in California. How’d a dame like you end up with illegal snails like these?”

“I gathered them where they cling to large rocks so high in the splash zone that you might think they were terrestrial instead of marine snails,” she replied. “At high tide a periwinkle feeds by scraping microscopic algae from its rock using its rasping tongue, or ‘radula.’ At low tide they are found individually or huddled together waiting for the splashing surf to return. But, unlike my son, an eroded periwinkle has excellent homing skills and can return to its home spot if knocked off its rock. Their shell is under an inch long and may be banded or checkered with various pale background colors. And oftentimes the shell’s spire is eroded, hence their common name.”

Like boiled periwinkles, this skirt wasn’t every mug’s delicacy. But she had a seductive delivery of marine biology facts. I said, “Tell me about periwinkle reproduction, doll face.”

She flashed an ankle and said, “The female glues a mass of jelly and small eggs to her rock. When the seawater returns, the jelly dissolves and the eggs disperse to hatch as free-swimming larvae. Unlike some mollusks that broadcast their sperm and eggs for fertilization, periwinkles fertilize internally. The male rides the female’s shell and … they do it.” 

“I’ll take the case!”

“You won’t regret it,” she purred. (I always regret it.)

I knew there were no English punk bands in town. However, my informants in the Humboldt marine biology punk underground said they’d been seeing Mohawked individuals in our local intertidal zone. Like beachcombing punk rockers, the washed-up shells of eroded periwinkles are uncommonly found. This could be because the shells are taken by hermit crabs who favor them for their homes. Or it could be because they live in rugged rocky areas where they’d be more difficult to find than on a sandy beach. 

But it was easy to spot their colorful hair among the rocks. These “punkers” attempted Cockney rhyming slang and called me “guv” with Bakersfield accents when they accepted the buckets of periwinkles. This proved they were guilty posers. So, I introduced them to my concealed lead-spitting friend and they spilled the beans on the whole operation. 

I sprung the kid from a clandestine snail packing facility and called in the G-men. Then I went home to collect my fee. Holy cats, what a dame!

Biologist Mike Kelly (he/him) is also the author of the book Tigerfish: Traditional and Sport Fishing on the Niger River, Mali, West Africa. It’s available at Amazon or everywhere e-books are sold. 

This article appears in Folk in the Fresh Air.