The shell was the first nature sculpture that captured my attention. From a young age I was compelled to study shells, especially beautiful shells, carefully. I tried to understand more about them just by looking. Many stand-out shells I came across were in souvenir shops near the beach where my family vacationed. Each showy shell I encountered was a mystery. It had its own unique shape, structure and markings.
The shells on the Florida Gulf Coast beach we returned to each year tended to be smaller and simpler, but I still loved picking them up and noted each curve and ridge. Every so often I would come across an especially interesting shell on the wet sand. A number of them made it home to Alabama with me.
After my paternal grandmother's father died, she took a long dreamed of vacation to Hawaii. I was thrilled when she brought me back one of the most gorgeous shells I had ever seen in all my eight years: a
Murex ramosus. I learned later the carnivorous mollusk that made the shell is native to the Indo-Pacific region and lives in shallows among rocks and corals. From one of the most beautiful families of shells in the world, no wonder the shell turned my young head. It's still among one of my most prized possessions, both for its loveliness and because my grandmother brought it back for me. When I lived in Florida I acquired a number of interesting shells I still treasure. And the spiraling snail shells my husband and I find in fish tanks and on hiking trails intrigue me.
The skull was the next natural sculpture I gravitated toward. I blame the eccentric, retired professor who lived in our neighborhood. I should also blame him at least partly for the way my office looks now with its shells, skulls, antlers, bones, skins, rocks, mounted insects, and Victorian photographs. His house, which I often visited with a friend or two, was a visual treasure trove of books, bones, fossils and rocks. Most notably, he seemed to have a saber tooth tiger skull, or at least a cast of one, as I recall. There was also a bear claw. And what appeared to be a small human skull without a jaw. His was a deliciously strange assortment of nature stuff.
I will always remember his house, and when I dwell in those memories long enough I also remember how envious I felt when the professor gave my friend Sandra a box filled with mounted examples of various minerals and rocks. She asked for it to take for "show and tell" at our elementary school. Eventually I too learned to ask and to weather the possibility of being told "no" rather than just to wish.
Although I love collecting interesting rocks - as well as butterfly wings, dried nuts, and other treasures - I will leave those thoughts for another time. Today I am focusing on the joys of organic-shaped sculpture created by wildlife, often for self-protection. It fascinates me that living creatures, depending upon their DNA, produce substances that can harden and become lasting remnants of the creatures' lives whether it be shell, bone, horn or antler.
I have just learned from searching the Internet: Shell is the external skeleton of mollusks, including snails and clams, created over time from secretions that become hardened calcium carbonate. Bone starts as regenerative tissue made of collagen, calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate. After death, bone dries and hardens. Horn is a permanent, growing projection from an animal skull consisting of keratin and other proteins surrounding a core of living bone. By contrast, an antler is an extension of an animal's skull that is shed each year. As antlers form they feature skin, cartilage, nerves and blood vessels. Mature antlers are dead bone. Interesting, huh?
Of course these nature sculptures often need a bit of cleaning and sometimes processing so we humans can better enjoy them at home, work, school or in museums. Remnants of dead mollusks organically disappear over time and are washed clean by the tides. Or they may be stripped away by shell harvesters. The lucky hunter or hiker may come across a shed antler by chance or search. Said antler may be ready for display after a washing or dusting. Bare skulls and bones are also sometimes found in the woods. But clean, white pristine bone tends to be the product of human intervention, an often laborious process that may include the use of flesh-eating beetles and hydrogen peroxide.
And what of shells, skulls and antlers that aren't collected by us humans? Old shells may dissolve putting calcium and carbonate back into sea water as raw materials for new shells. Or with enough time and pressure, layers of shells and coral can become limestone. Dead animals in the woods naturally lose their flesh to scavengers. Their bone, including antlers, is gobbled up by squirrels, mice and porcupines. It's a good source of mineral salts for rodents, I hear.
Nature is the best recycler. Nothing in the natural world really ever goes to waste. It just transforms from one beautiful form to another.
Photos by Kathy Hagood
