Amos----O.K.--You asked for it!

In 1967 Carol and I were living on the coast of Oregon---in a house up top of a cliff overlooking a lovely cove. Quite early on mornings when the tide was going out, we'd descend the bluff and marvel at the whole other alien world that was revealed to us there.

A friend visiting from Chicago decided he wanted to take a starfish from down in the cove back to Illinois. On a minus 2 foot tide, while I was sleeping in one day, he went down and got his starfish.

Now, when a starfish is out of water, it assumes that the tide is out---and that is when it releases it's precious bodily fluids onto the surface it is on at the time---. The incoming tide will mix the substances together to make some new baby starfish.

This fellow decided he wanted to dry out the starfish----so he put it on top of the grate over the oil burning stove that was our source of heat for the house. Nature took it's course, and the fluids dripped down onto the red hot stove where they proceeded to sizzle ans spatter and fizzle and spatter and sizzle some more. The result was a unique and aromatic cloud of steam that rose into the confined atmosphere of our good domicile to impinge upon and otherwise discommode our olfactory recptors. I remember saying to Carol something like, "Now, there's a smell I've not ever smelled before. --- I do believe it's burning starfish sperm, at best! At least, it's scrambled eggs a la starfish!!"

Rest assured it's an aroma that brings back memories that truly run the gamut of human emotions.

Art Thieme