Location: Orgrimmar Docks, Durotar

You know what I hate?  Murlocs.  They hunt in swarms, blitzing toward their targets like a group of gigantic amphibious hornets having a bad day, and then tackle, maim and devour you without a second thought.  There are few exceptions to this MO, like the Winterfin tribe of the Borean Tundra, who I am sure are only stayed by the utter confusion by one of the big people being able to communicate with them.  Murlocs are evil because not only are they everywhere and brutishly prone to beating your face in with a pointy stick, but unlike the majority of the ogre population – they are frightfully intelligent as well.  There’s one in the Blasted Lands that has learned to communicate in Orcish (and I assume Common as well)!  They are foul nasty things and I do not like them. At all.

You know what I love?  BABY MURLOCS!  They are the cutest little things that make the most adorable noises and I want nothing more to hug them all day!  The biggest issue in this entire game is that the only way to get one of these adorable little things to follow you around is to shell out big bucks for one of the very rare murloc eggs that were given away at the 2005 Blizzcon (Current Price: $1500-$2500.) That’s a wee bit out of my price range, but it is still so very tempting to have one of these adorable little things 24/7.  Hm?  Hold on a moment.  Someone’s at the door.  Be right back.

…Well, that was the man police.  They said I could watch cartoons all day OR fawn over baby murlocs but not both apparently, so they revoked my Man Card.  I should have seen this coming when I started collecting plushies. *shrug*  Anyway, given my aforementioned affinity for infantile murlocs, you can imagine my surprise when I was doing the Orgrimmar cooking daily quest, ‘Clammy Hands’, and when I opened one of these massive clams to pry out its tasty meats, a baby Bluegill murloc appears.  Wait… what?

In all my years of playing this game and finding weird things in it, I’ve never been so confused as finding a baby murloc in a giant clam off the coast of Durotar.  At first I thought it may have something to do with a rare pet that you could find, but I’m sure this would have been found already through data mining or someone accidentally stumbling upon it.  They don’t even stick around long, so it’s easy to miss them appearing and it’s not like they are in every clam either.  In fact it took me ten minutes of opening clams to get another one to pop out so I could snap the photo for this post.

Well how about this on top of everything – there are no murlocs to be found anywhere in Durotar!  Where the heck did this thing come from? From its name it seems to be from the Bluegill tribe…  in the Wetlands?!  So apparently, not only do these massive clams sitting on the easterm shore of Kalimdor originate from the western shore of the Eastern Kingdoms, but murlocs lay eggs in them too.  I think.  Does that mean I’ve used murloc eggs to make my enchanting rods?  Oh geeze.  Now I feel all bad.  But I’ve spent way WAY too much time leveling enchanting to just drop it.  Decisions, decisions, decisions…

But actually this does make some sense.  For one, it explains why you can usually find a good deal of clams near murloc villages.  Two, it explains why you never see murloc nests.  And three, it could potentially explain why murloc eggs are so darn rare ($2500?! Are you serious!?).  But the question remains, how did eggs from a tribe of murlocs in the Wetlands end up in Durotar?  Well that’s actually more of a clam question than a murloc question.  See a clam can mean different things depending on where you’re asking.  It some places, clam can refer to a number of bivalve mollusks and in others it can refer to a specific kind that burrows into the sediment.  Included in the number of mollusks that the term “Clam” can refer to are oysters, mussels, and scallops. (Yes, believe it or not I do perform some manner of research while writing these.  Even if it is just going to WoWpedia and Wikipedia.)

Now here’s where this gets interesting, while oysters, mussels, and most traditional burrowing clams do not migrate – scallops do.  And while there are no oyster or mussel related items in World of Warcraft, you pickpocket scallop shells from – you guessed it – murlocs.  See how all this is starting to come together?  So if these giant clams are actually scallops, then they could have migrated to Durotar after the murlocs laid their eggs in them.  It would go a great length into explaining how murlocs appear in so many spots across three continents.

So the question remains, how far-fetched is all of this?  Who the heck would think up this entire ridiculous scheme of migrating scallop/clams that traverse oceans as migratory ships for murloc proliferation?  I dunno…  How about a former marine biologist?