Srevotfel

I always loved Sunday dinners when I was a child. No, there was no roast, no set menu; it was Mom's day off, she said, and we would eat her specialty. She called it "Srevotfel*", said it was a Swedish dish. Or at least, the word sort of sounded Swedish. Good enough.

I was a picky eater, but on the table set with rows of little plates of Srevotfel, there was always something that I would like. Cheese, or gravy on toast, or re-heated scalloped potatoes; and double dessert, to boot! Yum!

It's not Sunday, but it's the beginning of a busy month, so here's my version of Srevotfel; aquarium photos from the last few months.

A rolled-up end of kelp, coated with an encrusting sponge and a small bryozoan patch. Three weeks later, the sponge is still growing; I'm not so sure of the bryozoans.

The biggest of the hairy hermits, with his chosen mate of the week. She's too small to escape his clutches, and looks thoroughly cowed.

An anemone has settled down in a tiny, abandoned snail shell. There's a hermit's eye on the left, for scale. And look at all those spiky hairs! On an eye! Looks uncomfortable to me.

This worm is about half an inch long. He's similar to the other polychaetes, except that his spines seem longer.

And he's a wriggler; this is a more typical pose.

More worms:

Feather duster tubeworm. Barely visible to the naked eye.

Here's another; he'd glued himself to the glass, instead of making a tube, so I got a view of the whole worm. Still barely visible.

One of the two-tentacled tubeworms, sharing a shell with a hermit and a slipper shell snail. It works out well for the passengers; they get access to good food sources, and a steady stream of crumbs. The hermit doesn't seem to mind.

A green eelgrass isopod, in a rare visible position. A couple of minutes later, he'd moved to a greener part of the blade, and I couldn't find him.

This one's an older photo. I liked the pink eye.

Dessert: a mud snail eating algae.

Munch, munch, munch.

I found a tiny, tiny, teeny weeny crab in the holdfast. One with black pincers; not one of our common shore crabs. I'm going to be spending some time trying to get her photo; she's not easy to see.

*Hint: read it backwards.