Our beach is heavenly. But our shells are evil.

Crunchy piles of zebra mussel shells punctuate the Lake Michigan shore. This particular mollusk needs to go back where it came from, namely, the Caspian Sea region of Asia. Nature works best when everybody stays in their own homes, a.k.a., habitats.

Good shells cover the beaches on Sanibel Island, Florida, one of the world’s top shelling destinations. Being a die hard beachcomber, I occasionally get myself down to that idyllic island. On the last visit, I got lucky and the Sanibel Shell Show was in full swing. Half science exhibit, half art show and all fun, I was inundated  in shell culture.

The local sixth grade class provided the highlight of the show for me. The kids acted as docents to explain the living shells in their display’s aquariums. I am sure that some of those young ladies are headed for careers in marine biology.

The shell art  part of the show fell into three categories. First, shells glued together to look like anything but a shell- bouquets of flowers or rabbits, for example. Next, shells collaged over the entire surface of objects such as frames, jewelry,boxes, lamps and chairs. And, lastly, Sailor’s Valentines, a term I had  never heard. A Sailor’s Valentine is a mosaic picture created with a wide variety of seashells. These shell greetings first were made by lonely sailors to wile away the long hours spent away from home. Their girlfriends were the recipients. I immediately saw parallels with modern day prison art where confined guys use matches and  gum wrappers to create art.

Here are some examples of Sailor’s Valentines plus my favorite shell art piece at the show. It is entitled “Starry Night Shells” and was submitted by a sixth grader.

We run a 24 hour diner in our backyard known as the Tooley Cafe. Despite the astronomical rise in price of bird seeds and animal food, we are happy to host a large clientele of furred and feathered guests. However, hospitality has its limits.

Last week my husband woke to one loud chirp in the middle of the night. Since all the windows were open, he thought nothing of it, an insomniac bird, perhaps. He rolled over and drifted back to sleep, noting that our faithful bed cat, Taj, was A.W.O.L.

Morning arrived, and all was normal. The cat was back in our bed, the house was in order and we went about our daily routines. Since the day was a scorcher, the Tooley cats decided to stay downstairs in their cool basement or in our only room with a window air conditioner. At 4:00 PM, Taj choose to leave his air cooled room. He marched into the living room and went directly to our two foot high hand thrown vase, stood up with his paws on the rim and stared inside. Then he walked away to his favorite spot under the couch.

I instinctively knew that I had to look into that vase. Approaching gingerly, I peeked in. A chipmunk was cowering in the bottom.

We put a book over the top of the vase and carried the vase to the car. The vase, the chipmunk and we drove to nearby Fischer Creek Park where we walked into the woods and released our visitor.

We should have marked him with a spot of fluorescent paint. This is one chipmunk who is no longer welcome in the Cafe.

The girls are back. Correction: the mothers-to-be are back. Two days after the Fourth of July, mosquitoes appeared everywhere. The entire outdoors is under siege and our only choices are to stay indoors or spray from head to toe with disgusting chemicals. We have reluctantly chosen Deep Woods Off.

A third choice is possible but not practical. If we don’t exhale or sweat when we are outside, the ladies won’t find us. Carbon dioxide, lactic and fatty acids are their principle people finders.

We may not like our female attackers, but we must recognize their fine maternal instincts. Needing protein to produce healthy yolks for their eggs, they target us, penetrate our skin and spit in the wound. Their saliva prevents blood from coagulating. Then they suck up our blood until their abdomens bulge and turn red.

The moms each lay 80 to 100 eggs in any standing water they can find in a discarded tin can, bird bath, rain-barrel, sand box toys, pond or puddle. In a few days the eggs hatch into the larvae stage known as wigglers. The wigglers wriggle around in the water, stuff themselves and form a pupa. Shortly after, the newly hatched mosquitoes leave the watery life behind.

Mosquitoes, flies and gnats are part of the order Diptera meaning “two-winged insects”. Aristotle named them because the rear wings are only two little vibratory clubs. The Diptera have rapid wingbeats which produce the familiar buzzing sounds.

If  your yard is filled with the buzz of mosquitoes, try putting out the welcome mat for dragonflies, swallows, swifts, brown creepers, nuthatches, toads and bats. All of the above rank mosquitoes as haute cuisine.

I’ve only wanted to attack my husband once in 47 years. Forty years ago on a summer day that was 98 degrees with 2 million per cent humidity, he came home from his air-conditioned office and said, “Isn’t it a wonderful temperature?”

I was near death from heat exhaustion with two young children in a non-air-conditioned house. My brain reeled: how could my best friend say this to me?

Fortunately, I didn’t throw anything or start yelling. I just said, “You have to be kidding, no one can possibly like being smothered in a steaming blanket”.

Thanks to the fact that we know how to communicate with each other, it turns out he wasn’t kidding at all. Impossible as it seems to me, my guy truly loves high heat and humidity. Put him in New Orleans on an August day and he would be a happy camper. I would expire.

I agree with Georgia Bottoms in that wonderful book by Mark Childress of that name. She says, “The only way to survive summer in Alabama is to sit down sometime in April and hold still until October. Or get out of Alabama entirely. Or follow the rest of the south into the embrace of the one true religion-A/C …”.

Wisconsin isn’t Alabama, but we do get several disabling heat spells every summer. The only thing I can do is not move. For someone who usually can outlast the Energizer Bunny, I find this difficult. But it’s more difficult to try to push my body through a wall of wet, hot air.

So I get to be a Southerner for about ten days each summer. Porches, immobility, wine coolers, cold boiled shrimp and a great book aren’t all that bad.

Marilyn Monroe in “The Seven Year Itch” gave some excellent heat wave advice as well.  …keep your undies and champagne in the refrigerator.

Click here to see the original movie scene “Undies in the Icebox”.

It’s outdoor grilling season, and we won’t. We do love grilled fish, sweet corn and veggie skewers. You don’t have to be a red meat lover to be a griller. Why, I ask myself, do we not grill? It’s irrational, but I will try to rationalize the irrationality.

Three reasons present themselves:

1. Flames- In the olden days, grilling involved evil charcoal starter, open flames and a rickety, little assemble-it-yourself BBQ grill. In other words, an open invitation to conflagration.

2. Dollars- Grills aren’t little anymore. In fact, they are about the size of a walk-in closet. They also cost the equivalent of a round-trip plane ticket to Paris. I’d prefer the ticket.

3. Expertise- Guys grill. My guy, although brilliant, handy and wonderful, is not a cook. He would probably think he had made us Cajun blackened fish until he took the first bite. I’m useless as I am afraid of hot surfaces that sizzle.

So I don’t believe a grill is in our future. Perhaps I will follow my dad’s example. He was extremely poor as a child, but he had life long happy memories of building bonfires in a vacant lot and baking potatoes in the embers. We could substitute the beach for the vacant lot.