The Thing I called "The Thing" that Appeared and Disappeard from Higgs Beach in Key West

My generation, the baby boomer generation, grew up fearing Russia and anything alien from outer space which I think was really about Russia - a society totally different than our own. One of the cult classics of that time was IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE.  I liked it so much I bought an 8mm five minute silent movie with subtitles.  When we don't understand something we fear it - well, most people do. Others go out and embrace it and figure out what makes it tick. Scientists and daredevils embrace the unknown.

Below are photos, most of which I took, but some which I borrowed from others who posted on Instagram, of an object that appeared one day at Higgs Beach in Key West.  I live a couple blocks away and would go over there quite often just after sunrise to visit this thing I could not understand. It just materialized out of nowhere one day. Initially there was no explanation as to what it was.

That is the White Street Pier in the background.  The beach is manicured each morning before the tourists and sun worshipers arrive. Those  tracks in the sand belong to the manicuring machine.

The East Martello Gardens is in the background. Maybe the iron fence was built to keep the aliens out.

We have a bit of a homeless problem in Key West. Some do-gooders feed them and that encourages more to come here - and stay. They sleep anywhere they can find a comfortable and safe place. For the weeks after I discover the thing I call the thing, I would drive over to Atlantic Boulevard (funny name for a two way street about only twenty feet wide) to take pics. Then I would see somebody laying in the bottom of the thing and drive back home.

One day I had had enough. I got out of the car and approached the thing. There was nobody sleeping there - just some mass of some sort. The thing looked like a smashed concrete sewer pipe.

Borrowed photo.

 Borrowed photo

On those occasions I show a condominium with a beach view I tell the prospective buyer about how quickly and how often the views of sand, water, sky change. They normally don't get it. These pictures show it to some degree. It's funny how a stationery object with a hole in it can be so mesmerizing. The hole challenges the viewer to look inside to see what is there. As you move around the view of the hole changes. It's remarkable in its simplicity.

Borrowed photo

Now I realize this not a smashed concrete sewer pipe but instead a fossilized giant shark mouth risen from the ocean.

Notice something different?  There is a little monument that tells us this is not a shark nor an object from outer space but instead a work of art.

The last line of the movie was "Well, they're gone!" or something very close to that.

One day I went to the beach and the thing was gone. It disappeared as suddenly as it appeared, without notice. I felt a sense of total loss. Seriously.  I had come to love the thing. It was someplace to go. To photograph and to imagine. And then it was no more.