Bubbler Crabs

Bubbler Crabs

I’ve felt like a bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

Bubbler Crab

These little sand-colored crabs occupy the highest low tide line, ensuring a twice-daily banquet delivered by the tide .  When I walk my local beach at low tide, I see whole colonies of them — identified by the little balls of sand they leave behind.  

Their colonies are about a meter wide, and stretch for a block along the sand, stop for a meter or two and then start again for another block — a good half-kilometer or so all together.  Some areas are crab metropolises and some are lonely outposts of crab-dom.

Twice each day, these tiny creatures come out of their holes and glean the sand for food, molding the cleaned granules into a ball forced up through the mouth-parts, then discarded on top of the sand, another ball already begun. The sand balls are the leavings, the crusts of bread left on the plate, the shells, the gristle, the clumps of fat, pits, seeds, stones, grit, and other inedibles of sand bubbler crab cuisine.  

Each line of sand balls occupies the edge of a trench that a crab has mined, and each ball represents the limit of the outward expansion until the next mining operation is undertaken.  And always, an escape route is cleared for a quick retreat back into its home hole.

Bubbler Crab Colony

The sand bubbler crab is perpetually wary.  Silver gulls, menacing giants in sand-crab juxtaposition, prey on the knuckle-sized creatures.  The crab’s frenzied gleaning and cleaning gives it away.  Darting home or freezing in place are the necessary but risky survival strategies, depending on how far the crab has ventured from its home hole.  Near = dash home.  Too far = freeze in place.  Only the crab knows how far is too far or how near is near enough.

Once the sand dries out, the eating frenzy and ball creation ceases. Gulls head for more promising territory, leaving the odd red-legged sentry behind.  The sand crab tidies its hole, ejecting little puffs of sandy detritus, and readies its den for the next tide.  It will poke an eye-stalk out of its hole (or perhaps a leg to get the eye-stalk into viewing position), but will zip back into the hole at any hint of predators, footfalls, shadows, or any other likely danger.  And it will wait for the advance and retreat of the tide for another smorgesbord of minute morsels.

I, too, am hunkered in my little hole, cleaning out the overly sandy bits, and waiting for the next tide.  Rather than living in dread of the next silver gull of disaster to view me as a tasty treat, however, I’m trying to be wholeheartedly positive in the present (a daily challenge), while planning for the future. 

Point Byron

I glean the details of my Oz-life for little story bubbles to leave on my life’s beach and relish the people we hold dear.  That doesn’t mean I don’t obsess over election trends, fingers tapping and scrolling and feeding on shifts and feints and obfuscations.  And I am clearing a path of retreat, just in case freezing in place proves to be a less-than-useful strategy.  

I’ve felt like sand bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

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For more on the amazing sand bubbler crabs, check out this video:  http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/29027-fooled-by-nature-sand-bubbler-crabs-video.htm