A coastal feast for the senses

Damien Enright counts his blessings living by the sea.

WE’RE lucky to have the sea near us. Fish guts, fish bones, crab carapaces, prawn heads, even meat bones, we throw off the pier. The gulls swoop down in spectacular mop-up operations, or the detritus sinks to the bottom for the benefit of scavenging sea-life, including prawns and crabs. So, it’s natural recycling; we may end up eating the prawns that eat the prawn heads, or creatures that eat our leftovers feed the fish which we will, later, eat.

I gave the dozen sandwiches left over from my son’s birthday party to the nesting ravens out on the cliff top and they attacked them with great gusto. A parent bird sampled them, presumably to establish they weren’t noxious and no threat to the fledglings. It then delivered them, one by one, to the nest. “Ham or beef? With or without mustard?”, it croaked, offering a neat-cut, triangular sandwich to its chicks.