"Was you ever bit by a dead bee?" Eddie the Rummy to Harry Morgan in "To Have and Have Not"

The fragile clay cliffs rise 30 feet or more above us as we scour the narrow beach at high tide. The huge fallen trees we rest on have future mates just above our heads. They hang by exposed roots just above our heads and only luck, chance and percentages keep us from feeling the real fear we should with those killers perched just above us.

Each small breaker of waves lapping the beach brings in more of the washing fossils that have been stolen from the cliffs as they have eroded. They swim in and out with each undulation and the special Miocene relics tease the eye as they swim in and out. The ones that pass the shell hash line , if only for the moment, get snagged and chased by the middle-aged man bent at the waist carrying a film can to collect them in.

Doubtlessly, there are coastal places where the innumerable sharks teeth of the modern beasts abound in thicknesses on beaches south of us. I know that my Floridian friends find them so thick and often that they take them for granted. I do not. The ones I find came from beasts long dead and often show the scratches of having bitten through the bones of primoridal prey.

Never do I have better perspective on the future than when I hold evidence of the deep and distant past.