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It was a close call as to which the Dolphins would recall less fondly: that field, the cacophony of seals or the motel restaurant’s propensity to serve chicken chow mein.

“If we have that one more time,” linebacker Wahoo McDaniel was heard to bellow, “I’m coming to practice tomorrow in a rickshaw!”

It seemed to be time to find a new training camp.

ST. ANDREW’S SCHOOL, BOCA RATON, AUGUST 1966

“Where the bugs took over,” former defensive end LaVerne Torczon said. “Never forget the bugs in that dorm. Big! Wake up and the floor would be full of bugs.”

Against this backdrop, a sweltering gang of more than 100 anxious players was being gradually winnowed to a final roster.

“Biggest bunch of renegades you could ever put together,” defensive end Whit Canale recalled. “They were giving anybody and everybody a shot. They even tried out a guy from the circus who [in his act] got run over by cars.”

Herald sports columnist Edwin Pope, who was there, recalled the motley team as “suspicious, paranoid guys full of dread they’d be out of football in five minutes.”

Stan Mitchell, a fullback, used to keep all his clothes in his car except the ones on his back, so sure that he was about to be cut.

Remembered safety Bob Neff: “I hid in the closet after every practice. I ran up about $300 in phone bills, telling my wife to get her hair fixed ’cause I’d be home tomorrow.”

Faced with calamity and uncertainty, a sort of giddiness set in.

“Whenever anybody would make a mistake [during practice],” Evans said, “a

bunch of us would start singing, ‘Moon Over Miami.’ ”

Center Tom Goode remembered that Joe Auer had this old dune buggy with rollbars that he’d race around the Boca camp, taking corners too fast. Especially this one time.

“Auer lost part of an ear,” Goode said. “They didn’t want any publicity about it.”

A circus, it was. “Not my vision of what pro football would be like,” as receiver Karl Noonan put it.

And the circus did not lack for acts.

Miami Dolphin Joe Auer before the second season, July 17, 1967. (Bob East/Miami Herald)