I’ve always been fascinated by horseshoe crabs, those prehistoric relatives of the spider that glide through the sand on multitudinous legs. I’d see one occasionally on a Florida beach, and it was always an event.
Years ago the kids found and brought home the fragile molting of a perfect baby horseshoe crab. Oddly enough, I stumbled upon it the day after the following incident, packed away unprotected in a box, amazingly undamaged.
I’m so happy we walked to the water that day, and not down the bike trail or up to Publix or anywhere else at all. It was a lucky thing, otherwise we would’ve missed the penultimate horseshoe crab event.
Ed and I perched ourselves atop the concrete wall that separates dry land from wet at the end of the neighborhood. Ed looked into the water, shouted “HEY!” so I looked where he was looking. It took me a few seconds to adjust my eyes to the murky water and rocks and…what was I seeing?
Dozens of horse shoe crab couples preparing for the newest generation. The males were the smaller of the two crabs, and some of the females were about a foot in diameter. They were lodged precariously between rocks, quietly participating in their continued existence.
We hot-footed it home for the digital camera, and as soon as we work out how to get our blog to show photographs again you can see what we saw that morning!
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