My car was so stinky when I got into it yesterday to drive to a meeting.  The whole way I kept thinking “what died in here”.  Wracking my brain I thought of maybe a small lizard got in the car and shriveled up, or worse a snake (we have them on our property) or maybe something I brought from the beach and left in the car.  So I got out and went to my meeting.  Two hours later I got into the car and nearly threw up. 

Seashells!  Maybe there’s a dead clam in the kid’s beach toy bag.  Travis likes finding clams and bringing them home, so that’s got to be it.  So I opened the back door and looked through all the bags, and then found, in the crate where we place our beach buckets when they have shells in them, a Florida Fighting Conch shell that was left behind.  As soon as I picked it up juice/water started dripping out and then as I held it over the parking lot the dead conch slid out with all its dead gooey-ness. 

Oh, you could probably smell it in the next county.  I moved the crate and threw baby powder on the carpet to soak up any ick that might have dripped on it.  I had to drive home (from east of I-75 to Siesta Key) with the windows down which is really one of my pet peeves because it blows my hair in my face and its annoying (my hair is in that in-between stage of growing out, and its bothersome in the wind) but I managed and was able to breathe fresher air with the windows down.

I did get the smell out.  I left the back door and one of the side doors open all day today. 

We had gone to Turtle Beach this past Saturday and found this shell.  I remember it because it was so perfectly polished and colorful.  I also remember placing it on top of my bucket because I showed it to my husband before we drove home that day.  The critter must have crawled off the bucket and landed at the bottom of the crate until I found it dead.

Moral of the story: make sure when you’re beachcombing that every shell you find ends up out of your car when you get home.