THE SHINING CLAM
FIFTY YEARS AGO about one in every hundred clams was a special 'shining clam'. Regular clams have a buttery, chalk-colored shell. Shining clams had a cloudy, glittery shell translucent enough to see the mollusk inside. It fit in the palm of one's hand similar to a butter clam. The texture and taste of the meat was between wet seaweed and garden hose. But eating it caused numbness, tingling, sometimes nausea, and hallucinations. Eating it gave people the power to see mermaids. Many, now in retirement homes, claimed to have eaten a piece of one or know someone who had. There is no proof of shining clams ever existing before; not even a fragment of a shell is left, because removing the meat triggered rapid deterioration and disintegration of the shell.
Every year people gather on tidal flats ankle-deep with rakes, digging faithfully, with the hope of finding one; and every year since the last nobody has ever found one.
There is a rumor that someone very rich still keeps a shining clam in a personal aquarium but their identity is unknown.