劉晨峰

Sandy Sikorski and Ken Steinkamphave been regulars at“ The Bridge Restaurantand Raw Bar” for four years now， butneither of them ever expected to have asgreat of a meal as they had in December.This Rhode Island couple was enjoyingtheir meal with Sandys brother and hiswife when something unusual happened.While Sandy was eating the last clam （蚌），she noticed something strange and spat itout.

No doubt concerned， Sandys sisterin?lawinitially thought it was a tooth.Looking closer at the unknown object， however，it was clear that wasnt the case. Instead，it was a particularly large andwell?rounded pearl—9.8 millimeters to beexact.

Sandy and Ken took their incrediblefind to a local jewelry store. From there，they were referred to their jewelry maker，Marc Fishbone， who was thrilled to createa ring from the beautiful pearl.

“He said it is called a Mercenariapearl which is a mollusk type of little animalwhich makes what looks like a littlepearl，” Sandy recalled. “Its made out ofthe same material， calcite， and anothermineral in it and takes years and years togrow. He said the weight of this， and thesize of this is probably 50 years to make.”

Finding a pearl at all in a clam likethat is one in 100，000. On top of that， accordingto jeweler Marc， finding one thisperfect is even rarer. Its probably one in amillion to have it perfect.

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How long does it take for the pearl togrow to this size according to the text？