RICHARD COLLINS: The boys opened a can of worms

THE easterly gales of the last few weeks drove millions of marine creatures ashore.

The shells of molluscs and crustaceans were strewn along the tide-line at Malahide. Gulls gathered to feed on the spoils. Whelks, razor-shells and cockles, their bright orange ‘feet’ protruding, were especially abundant.

Tommy Collins, aged five, and his little brother, Liam, on a shell-collecting spree, encountered what seemed to be a giant millipede, alive among the debris. The creature, over a third of a metre long and as thick as a man’s thumb, had hundreds of little legs along its body. On being handled, it burrowed powerfully into the sand.