What I Should Have Said About the Lottery

In the previous post, I talked about what I answered when someone asked me what whacky thing I'd do if I won a big lottery.  It was an honest answer, and it was something I'd been thinking about doing for years.  But there's a better answer, or at least a whackier one.  And it's also something that I've though of doing for years, although it's something that's probably completely beyond me.

Let me explain.  Once upon a time, I read The Panda's Thumb, a book by Stephen Jay Gould.  In it was an essay titled 'Nature's Odd Couples' that told the sad story of hermit crabs in Bermuda. Other crabs may make their own shells, but hermit crabs borrow theirs.

Hermit crabs have fairly good shell on their heads and claws, but their backsides are much more exposed.  They cover it by sliding it into an appropriately sized snail shell, which then rides on their back, protecting them.

Unfortunately for Bermuda hermit crabs, the shells that they have been using come from a species of snail that has been extinct since the 19th century. They survive by fighting over old shells, which are becoming rarer and rarer.  The day will eventually come when the hermit crab of Bermuda become completely homeless, unprotected to the world. They are expected to die out completely when this happens.

Fortunately, for me if not for the snails, I was reading this essay while my oldest son was at work.  He had been working at Jack-in-the-Box.  It was his first job and he was kind of stoked about it.  He had brought home a Jack antenna ball for everyone in the family, even his brothers, neither of whom had a car to provide them an antenna to stick it on.  They enjoyed the smiling balls, though, and found creative ways to display them.*

The idea of the homeless hermit crabs combined in my head with the image of the Jack Ball, which sort of looks like a snail shell if seen in dim light on the floor where one of your kids has carelessly left it.

A Jack Ball is a promotion, right?  How nifty a promotion would it be to make Jack Balls in the actual shape and weight and strength of marine snail shells.  Scatter them around Bermuda in various sizes and soon every hermit crab will be sporting a Jack-in-the-Box advertisement.  Jack gets credit for saving a species, the crabs get homes.

Of course, that would also make the crabs a target for tourists.  Perhaps it would make them a more attractive target for preditors as well.  Or maybe it would scare preditors off.  Jack does look kind of spooky in the right light.  So maybe Jack could throw in some plain shells along with the Jack Shells.  All the housing benefit and not as likely to get them grabbed by a guy in a Speedo.

If it worked for Jack, maybe other companies would try to get in on the action.  Baskin Robbins makes antenna balls with a similar shape.  Disney is sure to throw in some hidden Mickeys.  It could go places.

Yes, I know it isn't that simple.  Use the wrong material, and the shells could become a matrix for algae mats, or bacterial slimes.  There would have to be research and testing to develop a good substitute shell.  Do I imagine that I'll be able to convince a big company to pony up for that research?  Only in my dreams.  I'm not feeling guilty at all about not working on this one. 

But if I were to win a big lottery?  This would be a much whackier way to waste that money.  If anyone wants to photoshop a picture of a hermit crab in a Jack Ball shell, I'd be willing to post it here.  Come on, you know you want to. 

* Did you know that if you take the head off of a Ken doll, a Jack-in-the-Box antenna ball will fit right on in its place.  And then you have a Jack doll. 

Not Really Waiting for the Lottery

Someone asked what whacky thing I would do if I won a big lottery.  There are all kinds of things that I’d do, but the only one that’s a little odd is that I’d set up random contests and scholarships.

$500 for the best song/poem about sewage* treatment.

$500 for a floating, remote controlled mini-raft that strains small trash out of a small lake or pond - must be powered by a shop vac.

And one that I keep fiddling with thinking about doing small scale: $25-50 grants to fund elementary school science projects.**

I'm sure I'd come up with bigger and better ones if I had the cash at hand.

* wastewater for the PC

** I keep trying to put together the ideas that:

1) a lot of kids dismiss the possibility of a science career when they're very young, just on the grounds that it's not the thing that their sort of person does,

2) not just kids, but most people don't know that scientists spend about a third of their time writing grants to get next year's research funded, and

3) a lot of kids don't think about doing science projects because they don't have the equipment or the funds to do them.
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Maybe some day I'll do more than think about that last one.  In the meantime, this blog was meant to be a place to list the things that I've wanted to do and feel guilty about not doing, and I haven't been doing that much.  In fact, this might be the first time I've done it.

I've thought about this idea for years.