The beach near my parent’s house is filthy. I’ve been down there twice this summer and I could hardly walk in the sand because of all the trash. There were so many different things littered along the way that I couldn’t keep track of it all. There were plastic bottles, but more plastic bottle caps. There were a lot of Snicker’s wrappers and Swisher Sweet’s cigar tips. I found tons of bottle rocket remains and tampon applicators. Mind you, most of the stuff that was washed up was plastic except for the Styrofoam meat trays.
Plastics make it possible, right America?
I started cleaning at around five o’clock and stayed down there until seven-thirty. There were three teenagers swimming for about an hour and, after they left, one man came down to swim and play fetch with his two dogs. He came up to me, thanked me for how nice the beach is looking, and offered to take one of my full trash bags up the hill for me.
I found a dog collar and decided to call the number on one of the tags. A lady answered and she checked her dog, but she said he still had it on. I said I’m at the lake and she remembered she lost it a couple years ago. She said she’ll pick it up today.
Once the sun started going down, more mosquitoes and flies came around and were biting me ferociously. Howard brought some more trash bags and helped me for an hour or so, but the bugs got too bad. I have large welts up and down my legs and arms. The spray I used didn’t help much after carrying around a trash bag, which the flies were following.
After two and a half hours cleaning at the beach, we successfully picked up three and a half bags of trash. I feel like I accomplished something worthwhile this summer.
Some of the awesome things that were found included a plastic flamingo and a plastic bat. I also found a skull and partial neck vertebrae of what could be a seagull or some other bird.
There were a lot of seagulls feasting on this dead fish carcass.
Also, someone is building a hut. It’s pretty cool, but I wonder how much time they’ve spent on it.
