Short Stories in the Sand

The smoothed sands of low tide are like a gigantic blank sheet of paper upon which a million short stories are written.

Here is one. A wader, most likely an oystercatcher, is walking along looking for his breakfast when something - and I would love to know what - tells him to plunge his long, orange bill into this very precise spot and seize.... well, perhaps he didn't find anything, but perhaps he did, and a small, insignificant life was brought a sudden and premature end.

 

Here's another. A bird, perhaps again an oystercatcher, is flying low over the sands when, again for reasons I cannot even imagine, he chose this particular spot to land but, as he touches down, he does a small poop before hurrying on to start his hunt for food.

Our lives, just like the oystercatchers', are composed of similar sequences of mostly inconsequential events; they happen and, even if we noticed them, we probably forget them; and the tide comes in to smooth the sands for another day.