Spring Cleaning = Explosive Diarrhea

The Great Island Trail, which is just west of Wellfleet, leads to one of the most scenic spots on Cape Cod . . . high dunes divide Wellfleet Harbor from Cape Cod Bay, and once you cross over, especially if it is low tide, the barren beaches and tide pools extend for miles-- all the way to Jeremy Point-- and while we were wading south towards the point, Alex and Ian netted various sea life (and put them in a bucket and pitted them against each other . . . the hermit crabs fought each other over a shell and the shrimp acted as the audience on their "channel" of violence, as they called the bucket) and we met a lovely older couple who were digging large clams and we got to talking and the old lady said to me, "do you like sushi?" and I said "sure" and she then opened one of these fist-sized quahogs, which were much too big to slurp down raw (they were to be used for clam strips and chowder) and cleaned it out and gave me "the eye," which is the muscle that the clams uses to hold its shell together-- it was shaped like a scallop and tasted something like a scallop, delicious and salty and fresh, and then she said something about how this always gives her a "spring cleaning," but I didn't understand the euphemism, and then she offered me another one, which I ate, and then she said, "I don't eat them out here because they give you a spring cleaning and it's too far from the house if I have to go" and I realized that when she said "spring cleaning" she actually meant "explosive diarrhea" and this made me a little nervous because we were quite far from civilization and we certainly didn't pack any toilet paper, but my stomach held up just fine (and I even managed to lug four big rocks back to the car, for my rock wall).