Oh, I laughed so hard last night.  My husband enjoyed the joke, too.

As you probably know from previous posts, I enjoy beachcombing and picking up nearly anything on the beach from shells, egg cases, corals, surf-beaten toys that we’re left behind, and bones.

Well, I had been on the beach earlier and came home with a handful of bones.  Some I recognized as bird bones, and a few fish bones but there are some that look like either a bird’s coracoid or the tarsometatarsus.  I keep finding them and probably have about a dozen to date.  I had googled bird skeletons trying to figure this one out.  But as I was looking through one of my favorite books, “Florida’s Living Beaches” by Blair and Dawn Witherington, I saw a picture of these particular bones.  So there I read to my husband from page 202: ” Pigs have their feet used as bait in stone crab traps.  Most of these remains are fingerlike and stout (figure O [which was identical to the dozen bones I’ve collected with wonder]).  These pig’s knuckles are common on many southwestern Florida beaches.”

I laughed so hard I was crying.  My prized, yet mysterious beach find was nothing more than pig’s knuckles.