Simple Pleasures

I took Kaya-the-dog to the beach this morning. It’s been a glorious sunny day, cold but clear and crisp. All that rain washed the smog away. The tide was out, exposing bars of small stones and creating a pool of calmer water separated from the ocean by a sandbar on which shorebirds fed. The pool was occasionally flushed by little rippling waves, and was perfect for skipping stones. I have an affinity for rocks, especially beach rocks; I could spend hours sifting through a square foot’s worth of pebbles, ocean-smooth glass and shells. While hunting for skipping stones, I caught site of a smooth, orange rock. I picked it up, wishing that I knew enough about rocks to identify it. Quartz? Perhaps. When wet, it glistened orange to its depths. When it dried out, it looked dull. The only reason it caught my eye was because it wasn't like any of the surrounding pebbles. If taken home, it would become just another rock in my collection, nothing special. I put it back and saw a pale green rock striped with deep purple and brilliant orange. But the stripes only stood out because it was wet. I put it back, too.

Meanwhile, Kaya had found her own treasure. For once it was not a rotten piece of seal blubber or decayed fish or jelly; it was a piece of tennis ball. She had it gripped between her teeth, and was viciously shaking it to death. I didn’t have the heart to point out that an eighth of a tennis ball is already very dead in several ways. She was having fun killing it nonetheless. She tossed it up in the air. It dropped to her right. She pounced to her left. Stopped, looked around in confusion, spotted the ball and attacked. She used her nose to push it through the sand à lá Mia Hamm with a soccer ball. She dug a hole for it, lost it in the pile of sand she was kicking up, and rediscovered it with the joy of a three-year-old on Christmas morning.

I decided it would be fun to play along. I kicked the piece of ball several times, sending Kaya charging after it across the beach – all three feet or so: it didn’t go very far. This was only fun about four times. I quickly realized that if I wanted to join in the game, I would have to pick the gross thing up. Being a tough, non-girly, unsqueamish biologist, I did just that. Instead of tossing it far, however, I threw it in a high arc. As it flew up, Kaya leaped in synchrony. Well, her front half leaped but her back legs had other ideas. The end result was a wipe out of spectacular proportions: a huge belly flop in the wet sand. As I laughed, she got up, sorted out her dignity and pounced on that eighth of a tennis ball as if to say, “Oh yeah? You can laugh at me but I’m tough. Watch me kill this piece of tennis ball.”

When I got home, a funny thing happened: while emptying out my pockets I found that I’d kept the orange rock. It will now join my collection of other rocks that were only pretty where they first lay. Except for that fossil sponge I found in Marble Canyon; that’s pretty anywhere!