Jane and I were parked on a beach access enjoying McSomethings while watching kite surfers along with Munchkins the age of day-care attendees whipping around the beach on four-wheelers built for Hell's Angels when my cellphone started playing "Louie Louie."

I'm supposed to turn the thing off when we hit the sand, but had vegged out. The text stated "ck out Sun. erth wk sci sec of adn re wind turbns wnt to tlk clms 2."

I can't stand messages like that, but what am I supposed to do? That's the way Wild Willie normally spells. He accidentally became a text shorthand expert by dropping out of the fourth grade to pursue a career as a Dumpster diver when he turned 18. Others have to work to come across as content challenged mental dorks.

Anyway I knew we were in for a special weekend. Somehow wind turbines and clams were going to work their way into our Sunday barbecue discussions. I couldn't wait for the afternoon gathering of the truly demented on our deck.

Things went well, but weird. First on the agenda was the Alaska Wildlife Troopers' enhanced enforcement of clamming regs on the Kenai over Memorial weekend. They finally got a good shot at checking limits, size compliance and fishing license violations. The king run was slower than Joe Biden composing a coherent thought and the minus tides were so big that peeps were headed out with buckets rather than poles. So the badges took to the beaches.

Turk and I thought a widespread bust of clam criminals was cool. In the past there have been rumors of ninja clam rustlers jackin' them by the pickup load. We figured that some fines would chill things out a bit by giving the miscreants financial wedgies. Wild Willie didn't see it that way.

He has a problem counting to 20 without removing his socks and doesn't have five friends to stand around in their bare feet while he checks out what 60 looks like. His math sucks worse than his spelling.

W.W. has been in trouble before for taking over his limit of fish, usually from the back of someone else's truck, and the resultant up close and personal reunions with the judiciary were second nature to the scoundrel. We were mystified as to why he was terrified at being busted over a clam violation until he told us he had heard that some dudes had been ticketed for "misconduct involving molesting mollusks."

He ranted on for an hour about how he wasn't "no damn perv" and wanted to know what the definition of "molesting a mollusk" meant and how it could be proved in court. He was so riled up that if an animal control officer would have spotted him he would have been taken into custody and tested for rabies.

We finally got the old boy calmed down when we explained that the term "molest" can also mean to annoy, interfere with or meddle with so as to trouble or harm, or with intent to trouble or harm. It didn't mean those yahoos had been out there putting improper moves on unsuspecting cockles.

Nor did it mean that he'd end up having to register as a mollusk offender if he was tagged for a shellfish infraction.

He was pleased to hear that, but still wanted to know how a guy could annoy a clam unless he played it rap music or made it listen to a Nancy Pelosi speech. We gave up and went back to flipping burgers after he asked what caliber of clam gun he should use if he ever came across a geoduck.

He never got around to bringing up his wind turbine concern and that was a good thing. I checked out the article and it was about 400 goats that assumed room temperature because of what the Taiwan Council of Agriculture deemed "terminal insomnia." It took them three years to figure out why the critters were going hooves-up, apparently for no reason, after big wind turbines were installed on the wind-swept plains of the Penghu archipelago.

It turned out the goats couldn't sleep with all of the whirling noise and croaked from lack of sleep. The green power geeks were pleased with the turbines, but PETA was majorly pissed.

Go figure.

Why was Willie distressed over that mess? Well his latest neighbor is installing a couple of wind turbines and W.W. had around a dozen goats in his back yard that he was worried about. The problem was easily solved when we made him sneak them back to their legal owners.

There's something just not right about that old reprobate.

When he's not debating mollusks and wind turbines or looking out after Wild Willie, Nick can be reached at ncvarney@gmail.com.