Starfish

While in Florida, Josh & I were walking along the beach one evening... minding our own business... taking crazy pictures...

Sidenote: Can you tell that it is Mustache May? Josh refuses to shave until the end of May. It's beginning to smell. Let the record show that I hate Mustache May and Man Beard March and No Shave November and whatever else is out there.

Nevertheless, Josh & his mustache & I happened upon some sea life on our walk.

These jelly fish were everywhere!

Unfortunately, Matt stepped on one.

We found several broken sand dollars... but no whole ones :( Luckily my dad bought me a whole one to bring home!

AND THEN... out of no where... Josh spotted THIS...

A GINORMOUS starfish!

Seriously, look how big it is compared to my hand. It had 9 tentacles! I didn't even know that was possible!

We called Lindsay and Katie right when we saw it because we were all really wanting to see one on our trip! They ran the whole way down the beach to see it.

We were tempted to keep it and bring it back to San Antonio. But we weren't sure we could get through airport security with it. Plus, we figured it would die.

So we decided to send it back to the ocean. My friend told me that you can tell a starfish's age by how large it is and how many tentacles they have. Throughout their life, they will lose tentacles from their predators. Sometimes they grow back 2 tentacles instead of 1. Because this starfish had 9 legs, we figured it was pretty old and had survived quite a bit. So we gave it a little boost into the water...

Andrew sending it off back to its home.

Farewell starfish friend. We hope you have a long and happy life!

The rescue crew.

And everyone (including the starfish) lived happily ever after!

The end.