Clammy Farewell

I talked to my friend Colin about what I should do about the clams I had dug up and he advised me against consuming them. He said Singapore waters is pretty polluted and just to be safe, I shouldn't eat them. He suggested throwing them back to the sea. Hey but I wasn't going back to the beach any time this week, so I wondered what I should do.

Well, my mum made the decision for me. When I came back from work on Tuesday, I realised some clams were already missing from my container. I looked at dinner laid on the table and I saw a couple of cooked clams with their shells wide open at the side of the stir-fried veges. "I decided to cook them!" she proclaimed happily! And then she proceeded to tell me what she had done to the clams she had eaten earlier. She washed the shells properly and pasted them on a picture collage Cheryl had done previously. Voila! The clams had reincarnated into butterflies! I must say I was rather impressed by her ingenuity. This is the picture I'm talking about.

In case you're wondering, I helped Cheryl apply the glue for the artwork above. There's no way a 5-year-old can be this neat. I bought the colourful pom-poms and pipe cleaners from my favourite Japanese $2 shop, Daiso. We tried sticking them with white craft glue but it dried so slowly so I decided to use my intoxicating tube of UHU glue instead.

So back to the clams... I ate some and they tasted quite fresh, though I fancy they're far too tiny to be of any good. The next night, my mum cooked the rest in the soup and commented that they made the soup so sweet...She suggested I go digging for clams again and try getting bigger ones next time! The shells we kept for Cheryl to make more butterfly wings.

I'm glad, at least the clams have been immortalised in Cheryl's picture...