1983Fishing and Farming between Mountains and Seas

Chapter 344 I've never been so embarrassed
During the rest period, Liang Ziqiang took the opportunity to go to the shrimp pond again to feed the shrimps with Artemia and peanut bran. He also used his single-cylinder diesel engine water pump to replace some of the water in the shrimp pond.

At the same time, he also helped to replace some seawater in his father and eldest brother's shrimp pond using a water pump.

Recently he went to the deep sea, and each time he was there for several days. He had no time to take care of the shrimp pond in the east of the village. Every evening when his father fed the shrimps, he also helped him feed these acres of shrimps.

In the early days, he mainly taught his father and elder brother the shrimp farming techniques and provided them with Artemia and water pumps. Now, his father and elder brother also help him a lot in feeding the shrimps.

The father and his sons helped each other and raised the shrimps day by day.

After returning from the shrimp pond, Lizhi saw that he stayed at home and started to ask him to accompany her to the beach to catch seafood.

"Let's go, everyone. Xiangbei should also go to the beach to play. I'll hold Chengcheng for you!"

Seeing that Chen Xiangbei had been busy taking care of the baby recently and hadn't been to the sea for a long time, Liang's mother took the initiative to take Chen Xiangbei for a walk on the beach.

Chen Xiangbei actually still likes to go fishing, but because of pregnancy, confinement, and taking care of the baby, she hasn't gone fishing for a long time. It's a rare day when her man is free, so she glanced at him and went to pick up buckets, elbow pliers and the like.

"Great! Second sister-in-law is going to play seafood, Cheng Cheng is going to play seafood too!" The most excited person was Lizhi, who jumped in front, waving his hand net and shouting.

"What's the point of a baby who's not even three months old running around in the sea? He's talking nonsense!" Liang's mother said with her eyes wide open.

The strange thing was that Duobao didn't follow him today, and he didn't know where he went. Liang Ziqiang looked at the roadside, but didn't see him, so he didn't care.

A group of people came to the seaside and picked up some small clams along the beach.

"Look at this thing, it looks so funny!"

Suddenly, in the puddle in front, at least a dozen strange-looking little creatures were lying there quietly. Lizhi thought it was interesting, so he cried out immediately and ran forward to pick them up with his hands.

"Don't you have eyes? This is a snail. It can pierce your hand!" Liang's mother shouted at her.

But it was too late. Lizhi's hand touched the snail, and he cried out in pain and quickly pulled his hand back.

Liang's mother was so angry that she wanted to slap her down on the beach: "Did anyone snatch it from you? You can't even scream. I think you should be stabbed a few more times until you bleed!"

Liang Ziqiang and Chen Xiangbei also hurried forward to take a look. Lizhi hid her hand from her mother, but stretched it aside for Chen Xiangbei to see.

Chen Xiangbei took a look and luckily Lizhi didn't grab the snails with a handful. She withdrew her hand in time because of Liang's mother's scolding, so she only pierced the skin a little, but there was no bleeding.

Liang Ziqiang handed over the shovel:

"This thing has too many thorns. Either use a shovel to dig it out, or wear gloves before picking it up."

Lizhi decisively took the shovel from his second brother's hand, scooped up the fruits one by one and threw them into the bucket.

The spiny snail is also called the hedgehog snail. In fact, its general shape is similar to that of a common conch. Although it is irregular, it can be seen as a spiral. The only difference is that there are no less than 20 spiny spines on the grayish-white shell, which makes it look like a miniature hedgehog.

Chen Xiangbei looked at the strangely shaped object and asked the man:
"I can't even eat this thing, can I eat it?"

Liang Ziqiang felt that his wife was judging people by their appearance, so he smiled and said:

"Cook it and eat the meat inside. Not only is it edible, but it tastes good too. It tastes better than many snails. At least it's definitely much better than field snail meat!"

"Do you have any more shovels?" After hearing what he said, his wife became interested.

Seeing that there were no extra shovels, she used bent pliers.

The bent tongs were originally used to catch crabs, and the way she used them turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

The curved part of the pliers just happens to catch the snail, and is quite useful.

After picking up those visible to the naked eye in the puddle, she used bent-end pliers to dig up the sand. It turned out that there were still a lot of them under the sand, more than those on the surface.

So the lychees kept scooping up the lychees with the shovel, and Chen Xiangbei picked them up accurately. The two of them actually picked up dozens of snails and threw them all into the bucket.

As soon as the two of them came out, they had a great time picking snails.

"The meat of this kind of snail tastes delicious when dipped in soy sauce!" Liang's mother was already thinking about how to cook the snails tonight.

Hearing Liang's mother and Liang Ziqiang say that the snail meat is delicious, Chen Xiangbei couldn't help but feel a little craving for the snail meat tonight.

After digging up the snails, I picked up the bucket and continued to look for things along the long and winding beach.

After a while, something about the size of an adult's fist suddenly flashed across the sight.

Looking up, I saw a clam-shaped object falling on the sand. After a moment, it jumped up again, leaping high and flying more than half a meter away!
And it kept jumping up and down, bouncing back and forth on the sand like a little sparrow.

"Birdshell?" Liang Ziqiang recognized it at the first sight.

He had picked up a bird shell on the beach last year. That shell was several times larger than this one, as big as several fists combined.

This time it was not his turn to take action. When Lizhi saw that this strange thing could fly on the sand like a bird, he immediately thought it was very interesting. He threw down the bucket and shovel and chased after it happily.

The cockle kept running away in front, and the lychee was determined to chase it all the way behind. Twice, he reached out to cover the sand with his hands, but still failed to catch it.

The scene of relentless pursuit is also a unique scene on the beach.

Mother Liang followed Lizhi while holding little Jingcheng. Little Jingcheng's face was too young to show many expressions, but he watched Lizhi chasing after something strange with his eyes fixed on her, watching with great interest.

The young couple continued to search as they walked.

"Abalone?" Chen Xiangbei soon encountered a small surprise. She found a few small abalones at the edge of the shallow water and the sand.

If you want to find abalone when you go fishing, you usually go on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month when the tide is high. The water level is very low, exposing the bottom of the reef, and then you may be able to pry open the oysters and abalone stuck on it.

The few abalones they found at this time were obviously not in that situation. They looked like abalones that had fallen into the sea and were washed to the shore by the waves.

The abalones were all relatively small, and were far inferior to the three-headed abalone that Liang Ziqiang caught on Wuming Island.

However, for Liang Ziqiang today, he does not expect that catching fish at sea can increase his income. Compared with deep-sea trawling, it is not even a fraction of the income. It is mainly just for fun.

For example, the daughter-in-law at this moment picked up a few small abalones from the waterside, as if she had picked up a huge treasure, and her big eyes curved into crescents again.

"It seems your family bought vermicelli some time ago? Let's add another dish tonight, steamed abalone!" She happily made arrangements.

After putting away the abalone, Litchi also came back, and with perseverance he finally captured the fleeing bird alive. He immediately ran back to ask for credit and praise from the two of them.

Several people continued to search with buckets, and first found two stone crabs under the rocks.

Later, a fish was found lying in the water, not moving much, in a place close to the tidal gully.

"It's a goby?" Liang's mother recognized it. "If we can catch it, we can make a dish out of it!"

Liang Ziqiang originally wanted to catch it with his bare hands, but his wife got there first and used a scoop net to scoop it from the outside towards the shore.

"A blind cat meets a dead mouse," Liang Ziqiang said with a smile, "You really got it!"

"Don't eat tonight!" The daughter-in-law punished him on the spot.

Liang Ziqiang smiled shamelessly, and suddenly found that there was not only a goby in his wife's hand-held net, but also a shrimp, which looked like a drum shrimp.

"Don't go now, there is a hole underneath, there must be a lot of good stuff in the hole!"

Liang Ziqiang became interested and quickly called Chen Xiangbei and the others.

The role played by this goby seems to be not a simple one.

"This is not a goby, it's a gatekeeper!" Liang Ziqiang said, "There must be a large group of shrimps in the shrimp cave below. This goby just lay there motionless, guarding the gate for the shrimps!"

There is often a peculiar cooperative relationship between gobies and drum shrimps. Drum shrimps are best at digging holes, but they also have a natural disadvantage: they are blind and have extremely poor vision, so they see the world in a blurry way.

Therefore, even if danger approaches the cave entrance, they may not be able to detect it.

In order to detect danger in time, mantis shrimps urgently need a "gatekeeper" to take on the responsibility of keeping watch for them.

No one in the same species was up to the task, so a cross-species collaboration began. The goby, with its excellent eyesight, took it upon itself to take on the task.

Normally, the shrimp will place one of its tentacles on the back of the goby. Once it senses a threat, the goby will desperately shake its tail to alert the shrimp. The shrimp, having received the signal, will immediately burrow deep into the cave and hide.

In return, the goby can also quickly hide in the cave and use the shrimp's "safe house" to avoid enemies.

It is quite common for drum shrimps to hire gobies. In many places where there are large groups of drum shrimps hiding, there will be a goby squatting there doing its duty.

This goby was apparently dozing off today, and failed to realize the coming danger in advance, and instead exposed the group of shrimps underneath.

According to Liang Ziqiang's instructions, several people started digging holes using various tools.

After digging up the sand near the water, Liang Ziqiang found that what he had expected was correct. One after another, shrimps were shoveled up along with the sand.

The mud ball was thrown onto the shore, and Lizhi was responsible for searching for shrimps in it.

After digging for a while, they actually found dozens of shrimps.

An unreliable goby directly led to the annihilation of the drum shrimp group.

After they had almost dug out all the mud, they continued to walk along the shore. Lizhi walked and stopped, and fell behind with Liang's mother.

Chen Xiangbei lowered her head and found another hole on the beach. She quickly pulled Liang Ziqiang:
"There's a hole here. I wonder if it's a shrimp or a clam?"

Liang Ziqiang squatted down and took a look, and judged:

"It's definitely not a shrimp. As for bamboo clams, it doesn't look like one either. The holes in bamboo clams aren't that big!"

You’ll find out what’s there if you dig.

Liang Ziqiang immediately started digging again with a shovel. This time he dug up a large pile of mud and sand, but still didn't see anything, as if there was nothing underneath.

But the more he thought about it, the more he thought there might be something underneath. He dug quite deep until he finally dug out something a little bigger than his fist.

Covered with a layer of mud and sand, Liang Ziqiang's eyes were already a little strange. Chen Xiangbei didn't quite understand, so she picked it up and walked to the water's edge, using sea water to wash off the thick mud on it.

After only two or three flushes, all the mud and sand dispersed, revealing two brown and yellow shells inside.

There was nothing strange about the shells, but between the two shells, there was a thick and long tube extending out, like an elephant's trunk.

The skin of the long and thick "elephant trunk" is fleshy white.

It was nothing at first, but Chen Xiangbei looked at him twice more and suddenly her eyes became very strange. She couldn't help but glance at Liang Ziqiang's legs twice.

"for you!"

The more Chen Xiangbei looked at it, the more she felt that a certain idea in her mind was out of control. It was like holding a hot potato, not knowing whether to keep it or throw it away. Finally, she decided to transfer it to Liang Ziqiang.

"What's so great about a geoduck? What's wrong with your face? Are you sunburned? The sun isn't that strong!"

Liang Ziqiang saw his wife's face turned into a big Guan Gong face because of a geoduck. She looked so nervous and adorable.

Her face was so red, so naturally he had to stare at it for a while longer, but he just deliberately didn't reach out to take it.

This geoduck is really shameless in its appearance. The siphon part is huge and shaped like an elephant's trunk, more than 10 centimeters long. The two shells can't hold it at all, so it is just exposed in the open, which is extremely eye-catching.

"Are you just imagining something? Tell me what you've thought of!"

He moved closer, put his ear close to her and teased her quietly.

"You deserve a beating!" She was finally irritated by him and pretended to throw the geoduck into the sea. "You don't want it? Then I'll throw it away!"

She really didn't want to keep this thing that looked so indescribably ugly. Her hands were already dirty from it and she was about to throw it away.

A figure ran over from not far away, snatched it from her hand and held it in the palm of his hand.

"Don't throw it away, sister-in-law. This is a kind of clam I've seen before. It's delicious and fun! Look, I'll play with it for you. It's really fun!"

Lizhi snatched the geoduck away, but she didn't think there was anything wrong with it.

As soon as he took it, he started squeezing out the water happily.

At this moment, Chen Xiangbei was extremely embarrassed and wished she could follow the hole and bury herself in the sand.

But Lizhi wasn't embarrassed at all, he was having a lot of fun.

This scene perfectly illustrates the truth of later generations, "As long as you are not embarrassed, others are embarrassed."

"What are you doing, you damn girl? Are you happy just by making your sister-in-law wet?"

At some point, Liang's mother, who was walking behind with little Jingcheng in her arms, also caught up. As soon as she came forward, she saw Lizhi playing crazily and was so angry that she almost slapped her to the ground.

At first she thought Lizhi was playing in the water, but when she walked closer and saw the strange-looking thing clearly, her eyes became strange for a moment.

However, the old man is still the wisest. The strange look flashed away, and Liang's mother said seriously:

"If you squeeze all the water out of this thing, it won't taste so good anymore, put it in the bucket! I'll stir-fry the geoduck for you tonight. Add more onions and garlic, and you can make half a bowl of this!"

As she spoke, Liang's mother began to introduce to Chen Xiangbei how this thing can be cooked into soup, porridge, or steamed, and what the differences are in each method and how the taste differs.

An awkward situation was instantly transformed into an exchange about gourmet food.

A few people continued to pick up some clams and snails on the beach, and gradually walked to the vicinity of the small pier.

Liang Ziqiang's lotus-patterned wooden boat is parked at the small pier.

"Look, what is that thing?" Lizhi pulled him.

Before I knew it, a shiny, round head emerged from the sea water beside the boat.

A small, shiny black creature held onto the side of the boat, flipped over, and climbed onto the boat. It had a fish dangling from its mouth.

It's a sea lion.

Liang Ziqiang really hadn’t noticed recently that in the blink of an eye, the little sea lion had grown so big and could catch fish on its own…

The little sea lion brought the fish onto the boat and placed it on the deck.

When he turned his head, he suddenly found Liang Ziqiang standing on the dock at the bow looking at him. The little guy obviously recognized him. He flapped his front fins on the board, twisted and turned, and jumped towards the bow. His movements were so stupid, but also so cute.

After a quick glance, the boat was empty except for the little sea dog. Liang Ziqiang then remembered that he had not seen the big sea dog on the wooden boat several times recently, as if it had disappeared out of thin air.

Thinking back, the little sea lion has been born for more than four months. I heard that after giving birth to a baby, the mother sea lion will continue to nurse for more than three months, at most four months, and then almost forget that she had ever given birth to a baby, and will casually abandon the baby and travel around, never to see it again.

However, young sea lions around four months old must start to fend for themselves and go to sea to fish, regardless of wind or waves.

So, in the blink of an eye, this little sea lion has become self-reliant...

(End of this chapter)