‘Cryptic object’ washes up on Texas shore. Do you know what the ‘weird thing’ is?

A “cryptic object” was found washed up on a Texas beach, officials said.

“What is this weird thing that washed in?” authorities with the Padre Island National Seashore asked July 20 on Facebook. “Is it a snakeskin? A piece of plastic?”

Nope.

It’s actually a lightning whelk egg case, the national park said.

Lightning whelks are a carnivorous sea snail that live along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, officials said. And while it’d be rare to find one at Padre Island National Seashore, sometimes you can find their egg cases.

“Female whelks lay eggs in long strings of capsules 11 to 33 inches (27 to 83 cm), like in this photo,” according to the national park. “Each strand has up to 145 capsules and each capsule may contain 20 to 100 eggs however, only about 8 to 13 of the eggs in each capsule hatch.”

The whelks that hatch can grow up to 16 inches long.

If you find an egg case on the beach, officials said you can leave it on the beach. A gull or crab may eat it once it dries out.

The lightning whelk was made the official state shell of Texas in 1987.

“Although one of the largest shells in the Gulf of Mexico, the lightning whelk’s unique shape makes it easily recognized among most other shells,” state officials said. “The whorls of the lightning whelk shell coil in a counter-clockwise direction, with its aperture (opening) on its left -- an unusual spiraling profile shared by few other shells.”