I heard the little orange knobby monsters knocking against the sides of his plastic buckets. My Father was coming up the beach.

20 yards behind me, he held a bucket in each hand like a milkmaid. The buckets popped and jerked as if possessed.

"Keep it down in there," my Dad joked out the side of his mouth, and gave the buckets an extra shake.

I bent down and picked up one of the many Fighting Conchs stranded on the beach at low tide. My Dad caught up to me and I threw the Conch into his bucket.

One of the Fighting Conchs futily leapt free, and back onto the beach.

My father picked up the live shell and placed it back in its purgatory. "We need to get more buckets, these are too full." He said, still smiling at our good fortune, he looked down, "You guys are dead," he laughed, shaking the Fighting Conchs up again.

He reminded me of a professional wrestler; laughing at his own evil deeds.

My Mother bent over picking up Fighting Conchs 100 yards down the beach.

"Lois!," my Dad yelled, "Do we have any more buckets?!"

She set down one of her heavy buckets and stood up. Taking her cigarette out of her mouth, she looked our way.

"There's trash bags in the car, Pat " she yelled, her hand to the side of her mouth, hoping to amplify her scratchy voice, "Let's just put these into a trash bag and come back."

We walked toward our black mini-van and opened back doors. The luggage area was always sandy from similar excursions

"Let me see yours," my Mom said to me, looking into my full buckets, smiling, "Oh, goooood, honey!" She gave my arm a comforting squeeze.

We'd raped the beach. But Fighting Conchs, stranded at low tide, equal distance apart like well-placed Easter Eggs, still littered the strand for almost a quarter mile. In our years of shelling, we'd never seen so many at once.

A few days earlier the local Ft. Myers news reported the phenomenon. We'd missed the beginning of the report, explaining the mystery of the Fighting Conchs. They were probably there mating or something.

We'd only heard the last bit; "If you stumble across a mass of the shells, don't throw them back in the water, they will drown. Back to you Kate…"

Soon after we got home from the beach, the house would fill with the smell of boiling conch and pots would overflow with death and sea foam.

Once the beautiful little monster inside was dead, my Mom would carefully slide the limp bodies from their perfect, fist-sized shells. Each hunting-orange muscle ended in a curley-cew coinciding with the spiral of the shell it once inhabited.

I couldn't look at the little smelly bodies; their cartoonish orange antennae ended in two, white, too-human eyeballs, frozen open in death.

We'd set the empty shells in bleach for several days to clean off scum and barnacles. If the curl accidentally broke off inside when removing the soft, boiled muscle from its shell, we'd soak the shell longer.

If my Mom didn't want the extra wait or trouble, she'd just throw the shell in the garbage.

All that, for 25cents a Fighting Conch at She Sells Sea Shells tourist shop on Sanibel.

The beach was vacant and quiet. With a sound like breaking ceramic, we emptied our six full buckets of creatures into the black plastic bag. The bag was alive with small violent jerks as we shut the van doors.

Walking back to the beach, my mother threw her lit cigarette into the sand and stepped it out.

We continued our pillage: buckets empty, heads down.

Within 15 minutes we'd walked 50 yards and gathered two dozen more Fighting Conchs.

Looking up to the sound of splashing we saw a couple in their thirties walking toward us, picking up Conchs and throwing them in the water.

Every third Conch, they'd look up, check our progress with furrowed brows, and speed up their process.

"Hey!," my Mom yelled, "What are you doing!?"

The couple were 100 feet away, "What are you doing?" the woman yelled back at my Mother.

"I don't think it's your business," my Mom replied, hurriedly picking up another Conch and putting it into her bucket.

"Lois," my dad snapped quietly.

"These are living creatures you're collecting." The man reminded us, throwing a Conch into the water and looking around for another.

"Oh, We're not going to kill them." My Dad responded sternly, looking insulted and above such a thing.

The woman was about to throw another into the water, "Then what are you doing?"

"You know, they're up on this beach for a reason " my Dad continued, not knowing the reason himself, "If you throw them into the water they'll drown."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, dropping the Conch. I thought she'd dropped it because of my Dad's words. She turned to the man, "It bit me!"

We walked to them and picked up the shell. "These are Fighting Conchs," my dad held the shell up. The unnaturally colored muscle inside whipped its body violently out of its shell, toward my Dad's thumb. "See that sharp thing right there he's trying to hit me with…?"

The couple were silent.

"That's their 'operculum', their foot, it's sharp." He continued. His scientific terms melted some of the doubt from their faces. He noted their change and continued, "They use it to protect themselves and also to break into clams and Cockle shells. See these ridges along the top…?"

"Uh, huh," the couple nodded synchronously.

"That means this one's a male." My mother looked my way and nodded, knowing that all Fighting Conchs were both male and female. And that they all had ridges.

"Well…what are you doing?" The woman asked.

"We're re-locating them," my Dad answered, "We're from the Sanibel Conservation Association," He claimed. "Volunteers."

He performed for them and us. I was 13-years-old and I'd never seen him bullshit like that. I guess I was old enough now. It seemed to come so naturally to him.

"We're taking them to the other end of the island where there aren't enough Fighting Conchs."

'Enough for what?' I thought.

"Oh, that's really…" she paused, embarrassed at her previous assumption, she looked at the man, then back at us, "That's so good. I'm sorry. We're so sorry. Should we go out into the water and try to retrieve..."

"No, no, it's alright," my Mom added, smiling at them. I was glad she didn't say 'yes'.

"We're very sorry," the guy said, "Would you like some help?"

"Sure, sure, yes." My Dad laughed. They didn't recognize the professional wrestler tone.

The couple walked around the beach picking up Conchs. They were husband and wife, they said, visiting from Michigan. This explained their ignorance.

They talked on and on, telling us their life story. Telling us how much they loved Florida and what good Floridians we were.

My Dad looked at me sideways; the praise made him feel guilty, "We better hurry up, the sun is setting" He said to the couple, "We need to get this done before we can't see anymore."

"That is a beautiful sunset," said the woman breathlessly, "Everything here is just so beautiful."

"Make sure you only take the males." My Mom added.

Within 15 minutes the beach was clean of a generation of Fighting Conchs.

The couple helped us carry the buckets to the van and bid us farewell. "It's great what you guys are doing." The guy re-iterated.

"It really is," the woman added.

They got in their car with the Michigan plates, waved out the window and drove off.

My mother opened the double doors of the van. The black plastic bag lay like a bloated corpse, mutilated with small cuts from the Conchs scraping and fighting to get out.

Suffocated orange muscles peaked from the holes and the van smelled of dead sealife.

My Mother looked at the severe volume of seashells in our van and turned to me with yet another smile, "We're rich, honey" she laughed. And gave my arm a comforting squeeze.