MOLLUSC

Our final afternoon on the Greek island of Kefalonia, and we’re snorkelling around a cluster of giant mushroom-shaped rocks sprouting from the sea opposite Ithaca. Apparently thrown by Cyclops at invading pirates. As if being half blind is an excuse for not tidying up after yourself. Anyway, they’re great to jump off and, especially when the sea is calm, the most photogenic objects on the island. Which means I take the same photos of them every time we’re there, in the mistaken belief that one of them will be perfect, and I will look at it often, even though it’s exactly the same as the last, and I won’t. That’s the problem with always having a high quality camera in your towel bag. When you have the opportunity to preserve that perfect moment for all eternity you tend to take it, thus missing it completely.

The eldest lets out a gurgled exclamation and points down to a huge snail moving surprisingly quickly over the rippled sand below. With the magnification effect of the water it’s hard to tell how big it is, although it looks about a foot long. It’s decided that I’ll dive to get it, having the biggest lungs. Also we’re all slightly worried it might be dangerous.

So down I go and experience that strange forced buoyancy about a fathom down which makes it almost impossible to make the last few feet. I flail and bubble for a while, edging closer inch by inch, until finally it's in my grasp and I resurface with a fair amount of coughing and spluttering, as befits someone who learnt his craft at 1.6 metres in Kinross Leisure Pool. It’s heavy, like a small dog, but denser - a small dog that’s been minced and forced into a ten inch shell. 

Mummy has to see this, so the eldest swims dutifully in her direction, carrying the discovery just below the surface. He’s always been crazy about animals - any sort of animals - and I’ve never seen him phased by any of them. But judging by the splashing and screaming that suddenly erupts from his direction, I think he’s been phased, and I crawl manfully to the rescue.

My experience with shell-bound invertebrates - limited though it is - is that they’re quite introvert in nature, and once handled, tend to retreat into their shell and that’s the last you see of them. For as long as it takes to throw them into next door’s garden anyway. Not with this big boy, which seems to be attempting some kind of escape. I suppose my instinct should have been to wade in and wrestle the beast off my child without a thought for my own safety. As opposed to swimming away as fast as possible in the opposite direction, which is what I'm strongly inclined to do.

The armoured cap which, the last time I saw it, was tightly closed over the the shell's opening, is now worn like a helmet on the end of a creature that defies classification. There’s worm there, and some octopus. Perhaps a little muscle, definitely a spattering of Cumberland Sausage. But most alarming are the yellow and black striped antennae waving wildly around.

“Aren’t yellow and black things usually poisonous?” asks the eldest, holding the shell by its tip in an effort to prevent the strange tendril of flesh from coiling around his arm.

“Don’t be silly,” I reassure him. "It’s only a snail”. But I think he might be right.

Despite the panic, the organism is shown briefly to mummy who is stationed in the shallows with a large sun hat, and returned to its spot beneath one of the Cyclops Rocks. 

The eldest seems to have been psychologically scarred by the experience and returns to his mother’s side for counselling. He’s concerned he’s been poisoned in some way, and requires us to feed a bag of Haribos directly into his mouth to avoid cross contamination.

I meanwhile begin to look upon Greek souvenir shop owners with a new kind of respect. Imagine if every shell on their shelves had been won through hand to hand combat with something like that. I’m still vaguely troubled by the encounter. I guess the less like us something is, the more scared we are of it. Snakes are pretty bloody scary, having no arms or legs, or anything with fur on it. But at least they have heads, and thus the semblance of a face. Something we can look at, eye to eye, and get the measure of. Having one ourselves, we know all about faces, for example that they tend to mark the front of something and point forward. Which means we can roughly deduce which way a snake is pointing and where it might be going. And, most importantly for me, make sure we’re not around when it gets there.

There is something intrinsically scary about something that has life, but no face. Unless it’s small enough to squidge under your shoe. Or throw into next door’s garden. Take away limbs, wings or fins, and you’re heading very quickly in the direction of abject terror. Something dark and incomprehensible, that's probably out to get you. I’m still struggling to come to terms with the snail. It was like something that came off something bigger, but refused to die. An amputated limb still twitching, a removed organ still pumping. A detached muscle, with nothing to move but itself. It’s hard to imagine how something like that can have its own brain. It's like attributing intelligence to the hydraulic arm of a JCB. Can it really be trusted to make it’s own decisions about what to do, or not do? About what is good, and what is evil? Or does it just default to being evil, like a jellyfish?

And why do things without faces bother existing at all? When they can’t see or hear themselves existing. Or put their feet up in the evening with a glass of red? It all just seems so pointless - multitudes of unthinking entities crawling and sliming their way unseen around the planet for absolutely no reason other than to be fished from under a rock occasionally and screamed at by an hysterical teenager. And photographed of course. 

I notice that the family have arranged themselves in a reasonably picturesque manner on the pebbles. 

"Okay everyone, I’m going to take a panorama so everyone sit absolutely still."

"Dad, why do you never stop taking pictures?!"

Sometimes, I guess, having two eyes and a memory isn’t enough.

"Shut up and smile."


@jesoverthinksit 

For more tales from Kefalonia take a trip to:

Greek Loaf

Battle for Beach 8