Cobalt bubbles tossed
Ashore, angry winter storm
Stranded, shriveling

Thank you Clare at My Creative Cosmos for inviting me to join this wonderful challenge.

This photo was taken December 7, 2013.

Every once in a while strong winds will drive large swarms of Portuguese man o’ war up onto our beaches. There will be so many that it is hard to walk on the sand without stepping on one. The tentacles sting by means of venom-filled nematocysts that can still actively trigger after death, so walking barefoot on the beach when they are around is a very bad idea. These creatures are not really a “jellyfish” in the traditional sense. They are an organism known as a siphonophore that consists of a colony of zooids that work together to create one living creature. So while as a colony organism they represent the epitome of teamwork, as a swarm they are ironically at the mercy of the wind and current. I find them strangely beautiful and their mass casualty a sad event. This type of stranding tends to be more common in the winter when the storms roll in off the Gulf of Mexico. This particular morning was cold and overcast with a misty, ethereal quality to the beach. Iridescent cerulean sails tangled in golden sargassum streamers were strewn about the sugar white sand as raucous gulls raided the spoils for morsels of trapped food. This force of nature went on for weeks with each pounding wave tossing more passive victims ashore to their ultimate death.

OK, here is where I am going rogue. I am not going to follow the strict rules and pay it forward to five other folks. An elaborate explanation of why can be found on my Five Photos, Five Stories – Day One: Fog post if you care to read my obnoxious rant. Here are my rules: If I follow you, I admire and respect your work. If you would like to take on this challenge, please do so as I would very much like to follow what you create. I will be posting one more of these photos, haiku and stories guilt free with the hope of inspiring someone else to take a shot at it. If you take on the challenge and want to follow the original rules, I think that is great so here are what the rules are supposed to be:

The Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge rules require you to post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or simply a short paragraph – it’s entirely up to you.

Then each day, nominate another blogger to carry on this challenge.

Accepting the challenge is entirely up to the person nominated, it is not a command. Today, I invite (insert nominee here) to join the challenge.

I would like to give a special “Thanks” to all of the wonderful bloggers that follow and support me and especially to Clare for being so patient with me.

This is also a response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Forces of Nature which inspired a theme for my five day challenge and will be incorporated in each of the five posts.