Day 2, Where Is That Chiton?

I have always had a thing for natural history museums and the older and moldier the better. Classic museums with stuffed creatures in ancient display cases (I'm thinking of the Libby Museum in Wolfeboro, NH for example). Entombed, dusty, strange beasts that went extinct because they had the perfect feather for a hat or fur for a stole.  They have names like: the hartebeest or the quagga or the ivory-billed woodpecker.  For this blog entry I present my display case.  Points of interest from top to bottom include a Ross York sculpture, a white-tailed deer antler from Essex, MA, a pine cone from California, A whale vertebrae from Alaska, A Kurt Zimmerman mug from Cocoa, FL, a liver/ gall bladder/small/large intestine from an anatomical model from Bridgewater State College, a gopher tortoise shell from Old Wire Road, a cigar box from the 1920's and some other stuff.  No extinct animals and not your typical natural history museum case.  

There is one item that was in the cigar box (though I can't find it now) that fascinated me for the longest time.  I found it on my quest to circumnavigate the island of Culebra. My friend Katie and I wanted to find the fabled cave of Culebra due to a borderline unhealthy obsession with Twin Peaks and the mysterious behavior of locals that all wore a ring with eerie markings. It's a long story and I don't speak spanish. Anyway, I was attempting to circumnavigate Culebra with my camera. I was climbing along the craggy cliff-like shore between isolated beaches when I lost my footing and fell into the water. It was all pretty harmless, but I was alone and I had to find a way back up using hand and foot holds as waves crashed against my body. My old analog camera was being washed with salt water and it would slowly seize up a few days later.  On my climb up out of the water, placed perfectly at eye level, I found a mollusk shell with 8 plates. I had never seen anything like it before.  This was before the internet could answer any question and it was still possible to not know things.  I tucked it into my pocket and walked back to our home overlooking the harbor.  About 15 years later I discovered that this beast is a fuzzy chiton and they are mysterious creatures. I never found the cave, nor did I circumnavigate Culebra.