Oyster Quotes

“The oyster’s radar and defensive mechanisms are critical for its survival, for mouths other than human mouths hunger for oyster flesh. Oysters have several principal predators: the starfish wraps its arms around the oyster, forces its shell apart and ingests it; the boring sponge bores tiny holes in its shell, honeycombing it with tunnels; the slipper-limpet and the mussel smother the oysters or starve them by attaching themselves to an oyster’s shell and eating all their food; the dog-whelk and the whelk-tingle also bore into the shell and suck out the flesh.
The oyster, beset by such enemies, writes M.F.K. Fisher, ‘lives motionless, soundless, her own cold ugly shape her only dissipation, and if she escapes the menace of duck-slipper-mussel Black-Drum-leech-sponge-borer-starfish, it is for man to eat because of man’s own hunger’.”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster

“إن رادار المحار، وآلياته الدفاعية حاسمة لأجل بقائه؛ لأن أفواهًا أخرى عدا الأفواه البشرية تواقة لأكل لحمه. فللمحار مفترسون أساسيون عدة: يلف نجم البحر أذرعه حول المحار، يفتح صدفتيه بالقوة ويبتلعه، يثقب الأسفنج الثقَّاب ثقوبًا صغيرة في صدفته، يمصه عبر أنابيب، ويخنق البطلينوس الخُفي وبلح البحر المحار أو يجوعانه بالالتصاق بصدفته وأكل طعامه كله، يثقب الحلزون الكلبي، والحلزون الواخز الصدفة ويمصان اللحم. وفي وسط أعداء كهؤلاء، تكتب م. ف. ك. فيشر، "يعيش من دون حركة، ودون صوت، جسمه البارد القبيح هو رفاهيته الوحيدة، وإن نجا من خطر كل هؤلاء الذين ذكرناهم، فإنه من نصيب الإنسان ليشبع جوعه".”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster

“شكلت شعاب أصداف المحار جزرًا بنى عليها البشر بيوتهم. فهناك في السنغال -مثلًا- على الساحل جنوب داكار، جزيرة تسمى فاديوث تتصل باليابسة بواسطة جسر. وفي الأصل كانت هذه أرخبيلًا تشكل خلال ملايين السنين بأصداف محار القرم. وهو المحار الذي ينمو على الجذور المديدة لأشجار القرم.
يسافر الناس بين جزيرة وأخرى بالزوارق ويصطادون المحار، يجذفون عبر المياه الضحلة المرصوفة بالمحار، المحاطة بأشجار الباوباب الاستوائية التي تقتات على الكالسيوم. والشوارع محاطة بأصداف البحر، وفي المقبرة دُفن المسلمون والكاثوليك تحت تلال أصداف المحار البيضاء المدهشة المظللة بأشجار القرم.”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster

“Oyster-shell reefs have formed islands on which humans have built their homes. In Senegal, on the coast south of Dakar, for instance, there is an island called Fadiouth joined to the mainland by a bridge; this is actually an archipelago formed over millions of years by the shells of mangrove oysters, oysters that grow on the extensive tree roots of mangrove trees.
The people travel from one island to another and fish for oysters by canoe, paddling across a lagoon paved with oysters, and lined by baobab trees which feed on calcium. The streets are lined with oyster-shells, and in the cemetery, Muslims and Catholics are buried under startlingly white oyster-shell mounds in the shade of the mangrove trees.”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster

“In a poem by William Cowper (1731–1800), ‘The Poet, The
Oyster and the Sensitive Plant’, the poet uses the oyster to
philosophize on sensitivity and suffering in the animal and
vegetable worlds.

The poem opens with the oyster bemoaning
its fate:

Ah hapless wretch! Condemned to dwell
For ever in my native shell,
Ordain’d to move when others please,
Not for my own content or ease,
But toss’d and buffeted about,
Now in the water, and now out.
‘Twere better to be born a stone
Of ruder shape and feeling none,
Than with a tenderness like mine,
And sensibilities so fine!”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster

“In the first century ad, the Spanish-born Roman poet Martial wrote an epigram addressed to his patron, Ponticus, complaining about the poorer food that his patron served to his lower status guests at his banquets. Ponticus reserved his Lucrine oysters for himself and his most important guests; there were to be no oysters for the poet:

Now I get a proper invitation to dinner since my days as a paid entertainer are past, why am I given a different dinner from you? You feed on big fat oysters from the Lucrine lagoon; I’m left sucking mussel shells and split lips. You get the choicest mushrooms, I get fungus pigs won’t touch. You toy with turbot; I’m down there with the catfish. You stuff yourself with fine roast peacock, its rump indecently plump; laid out on my plate is the kitchen canary’s corpse – found dead of old age in its cage. Why don’t we dine together, Ponticus, when I come to dinner with you? No longer being hired to come could be a step up the social ladder – if we supped the same.”
― Rebecca Stott, Oyster