Good Intentions and the Call of the Conch

Here’s a true story of how my good intentions had an unsuccessful outcome and the life-lessons learned from the experience.

They were guests at my family’s place on Cat Island. One day the couple snorkeled off the beach and brought back a beautiful Queen Conch from the seagrass in the shallow water. The shell was a prize, something from the Bahamas to take back to their home in the states and display on their coffee table. But this conch wasn’t an empty shell, it had a living snail in it and our guests were determined to keep the shell intact, without any inhabitants.

Removing a snail from a conch shell isn’t as easy as you think.

The snail inside is able to create a vacuum, remaining anchored and unremovable. One method is to break the vacuum by making a small hole at the top of the shell. Most people do this by using a small ax or a hammer. Once the shell is pierced and the vacuum is broken, you can pull the snail out with the tip of your knife. It won’t offer much resistance anymore. But this process results in a blemished shell.

A more brutal way to remove the snail (for it), without damaging the shell is to hook the meat and let it hang until it dies. 

I’ll never forget seeing the beautiful Queen Conch hanging from a hook in our walk-in freezer. It was still very much alive; it takes a lot to kill a conch, and I wanted to save its life. That was my intention, anyway.

But I didn’t consider suggesting options with our guests, or talking about this concern with my parents. So, with my good intentions, I unhooked the conch and ran to a large retention pond near our place and hurled it as far as I could, where it made a big splash. It was now safe and free, or so I thought.

Hours later I walked by the retention pond and noticed the Queen Conch on the shore, its eyes bobbing from under the shell. I picked it up once again, but this time I took a few steps back, then ran and launched the conch even further into the depths of the pond. Surely it would be fine this time.

As the sun set over Cat Island and the sky became alive with color, the majestic Queen Conch crawled her way back to the place where I had thrown her?—?twice. This time, however, she died on the shore. I was crushed.

Weeks went by before I mentioned any of this to my mother. Our guests were long gone and my mother told me that while my intentions may have been good, had I spoken with her or our guests about my issue with the conch, the outcome could have been much better for everyone.

What I didn’t know then was that the retention pond I tossed the Queen Conch into was a dead pond; it had no ocean access. The Queen Conch crawled its heavy self around looking for oxygen, finding only me on the shore. And what did I do? I sent her back to the deepest part of the lifeless water!

What did I really want? I wanted that conch to live. What should I have done? I should have shared my feelings and concerns from the beginning. I could have found other empty shells for our guests to take home, or maybe they would have found empty shells themselves if they knew how much this bothered me. Had I asked, my mother would have told me the retention pond was dead. In the end, the Queen Conch would have lived longer. My mother reminded me that no matter how I looked at it, my intentions were not justified. What mattered was the outcome. I should have spoken up.

Mom was right.

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