Tic..tic..

The clock tics for us all and one of them will be your last.
Anne is devoting a great many of hers at them moment to secret business in the lab.
It entails tanks of captive cockles being fed various metals, and then dissected and fed into expensive pinging machines to see how their little bodies have suffered.

Every so often she will dip into the tanks to retrieve the next victims.
I picture them all nervously huddled together, quivering in fear. Down the corridor boom deathly footsteps, and her terrifying back-lit features loom over the edge of the tank. Each prays that it won’t be them, that this does not announce their final tic.

Regardless of the fate of the cockles, it has been going well for Anne. It looks like she’s over the major hurdle for her study, and will be able to fly off to Europe in just over 2 weeks time. She’s very excited about that.
I hope she has a good time, but more importantly, that she leaves us with a 7 week supply of frozen dinners.

The cockles may be suffering for science, but some of their estuarine neighbours did win some revenge by launching a suicide attack on her legs a few weeks ago.

Wading in the shallow water looking for cockles, she stirred-up sea lice in the sediment. Some soon found themselves sitting on her legs, and out of water. So, thinking they needed to re-bury themselves, they burrowed into her legs. A few hours later she broke out in the most horrible sores which took weeks to heal.