The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons by Glen Chilton Read Free Book Online Page A

trying to grip the handlebars too hard, she developed a mastery of her two-wheeled beast and was left with a sense of personal accomplishment. “I even managed to signal twice without going out of control.” She used the expression “KaPEEba” to indicate what the crash would have sounded like, and I resistedthe temptation to ask what part of the collision would have made that sound.
    We set out from Den Burg along scenic and perfectly flat bicycle paths, past Oosterend, along a nasty detour for road construction near Oost, and on to the Lancasterdijk that separates the low-lying parts of the island from the Wadden Sea. The dyke was given its name in commemoration of the crew of an Allied Lancaster bomber that crashed there in WWII.
    We reached the sea about an hour before low tide would expose the oysters, and so watched shorebirds foraging on sea life left behind by the receding waters. Adjacent fields were filled with lapwings, spoonbills, and avocets. We also watched a rich cross-section of the island’s residents and visitors cycle by. Many of these cyclists were considerably older than us, and were probably pedalling further. If I were to move to Texel, I suppose I would have to begin a diet of muesli and mega-vitamins just to keep up.
    Lisa and I leaned back on the Lancaster dyke, soaking up the sun, eating almond pastries and waiting for the sea to recede. We didn’t really know what a Pacific oyster bed might look like from the shore, but big black smudges were being revealed at the water’s edge some hundreds of metres away. We walked across the tidal flat, trying to choose a route to the biggest smudge that would be least disturbing to the birds foraging on what the outgoing tide had left behind.
    As we proceeded, the smudges revealed themselves as patches of oysters. Shoal beds, they stretched a couple of hundred metres. Ugly little devils. Rob had told us that they are unappealing to eat because they are too big to swallow in one gulp. They were grey, corrugated, rock hard, and cemented to everything else in sight. In turn, everything else was cemented to them, including barnacles, snails, and red and brown algae.
    You have to give Pacific oysters in the Wadden Sea a high score on the yuck scale even before getting to the squishy bit on the inside. They would probably be best described as beautiful when covered at high tide. Lisa claimed to be surprised that there weren’tmore of them, given the big hype. Nasty-Pacific-oysters-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see sort of thing. But it was clear that if they continued to spread, occupying more and more of the intertidal zone, Pacific oysters would become an ecological force to be reckoned with.
    We played in the sea for about an hour, collecting particularly nice examples of each shell type we saw, after ensuring that their owners and everything attached to them had died. On that day, it seemed that being a biologist was an excuse to splish-splash in the water, get muddy, pick up dead stuff, and get paid for doing it. It was an excuse to be a four-year-old child without an authority figure hovering over you. Standing in any one spot too long was ill-advised, as black organic ooze crept up from under the clean tan-coloured sand and engulfed our feet, making the whole experience that bit more delightfully gross.
    We cycled south along the coast to a second spot that Norbert had recommended and watched as the sea retreated further from land. As it did, it exposed more indistinct black smudges, but much further out. I contemplated whether I had seen enough oysters for one day or whether I should tromp out to this next group. One ugly oyster is pretty much like another, right? But my conscience got the better of me. First, I had come a very long way to see Pacific oysters, and surely more was better than less. Second, I knew that Norbert would ask me whether I had visited both sites. And so, with Lisa reclining on the dyke, I set off across the sands.
    Or rather, I set off