A Quick Bite "What if the scallops bite me?" Alicia asked, rather more loudly and fearfully than she really wanted to sound. "It
won't hurt much," her brother, Ron, teased. "But if it does, I am fully prepared to amputate." "You are not helping," Alicia shrieked. Ron was driving the boat, and he clearly knew what he was doing. He had been running boats, working crab traps since Alicia was old enough to notice such things. Still, she wasn't sure she trusted him to tell her the truth about things. She was younger, and he liked to tease. She often found herself soaking wet from a dunk, or the loser in a game he'd "forgotten" to explain the rules for. She loved him nonetheless. He brought her treasures from his traps. He told her stories of strange creatures he'd seen in the salt marshes. "Seriously," Ron continued, slowing the boat down, "they can't really hurt you. It's just a bivalve." "Bivalve means 'two valves,'" Alicia said, "but that doesn't tell me anything about how hard they bite." Spray from the waves speckled Alicia's back and shoulder. She had turned to talk to Ron, but she also was enjoying a break from getting the spray in her face. It was a warm sunny day, but Alicia knew if the wind picked up she could get chilled. "Look, it's not going to hurt if you get bitten," Ron said, taking her seriously now. "If you just pick them up from the back you won't have any trouble. Shoot, you pick up crabs all the time and they have a much more painful pinch than a scallop." "Well, there's a bigger place to put my hand on a crab. Scallops are petite." "And squirty," Ron added. "You know they move by pushing water through their shell? But seriously, sis, they move slowly. They will be snuggled down in the sea grass when you see them and won't go far if they do move. You'll be fine. Now climb up on the bow, look out in the shallows, and see if you can see any." Ron had slowed the boat to an almost idle speed. Up ahead Alicia could see many boats anchored on the shallow flats. People walking around the boats
