This past weekend was the last time I’d have the chance to go to the beach with my family this summer, thanks to my attendance at DragonCon this weekend. With a stretch of nice weather forecast, I planned for us to do two beloved beaches on Saturday and Sunday; our local suburban lake beach and a newly discovered beach further away that my wife and son fell in love with this year.
Sunday’s visit to the faraway beach turned out to be the memorable “end of summer” day, thanks to the sheer number of crabs in the water.
Our good friends were able to join us on Sunday, and as we were wading out into the deeper waters we kept sighting, and sometimes feeling, crabs all around us. They weren’t especially big nor were their occasional pinches painful, but their presence was certainly felt. We decided to give them some room. Honestly it felt nice to let them “chase some giants away” since crabs are the prey for most everything else in the ocean.
My wife and son didn’t join us out in the deep waters, but rather went to a rocky area where the water was making shallow tide pools. She adores finding sea life in those areas and when I came out of the water she was easily picking hermit crabs of various sizes (mostly small) out of the tide pools, showing them off, and promptly returning them.
I stood very still among those shallow waters, not wanting to disturb anyone’s search nor wanting to accidentally step on anything. It was then I discovered that a full-sized crab had perched itself upon my foot. I was quick to announce this and everyone in the vicinity, friend and stranger alike, peered at the crab who had decided I was a good place to park. I was expecting it to run away at best and to pinch me at worst, but I couldn’t have predicted what it began to do next.
It started to clean my foot with its pincers.
My brain couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Not only did it resemble the crabs perched upon the bubbling pipe from Finding Nemo, but its attentions were ticklish. A tickling sensation was the last thing I would have expected from not only a sea creature, but one covered in a shell whose primary limbs were claws. But for the next three-to-five minutes I was given a crustacean pedicure, and then it scuttled away.
My wife tried to replicate the event, and a different crab did attend to her foot, but it pinched her.
I stayed exactly where I was, hoping the same crab would return for my other foot, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was another crab began attending to the heel of my other foot, and to my astonishment a shrimp (that resembled Jacques from Finding Nemo) perched itself on my toes. They stayed with me only for about ninety seconds before moving on.
Never in a million years could I have predicted that my last beach day for the summer this year leave me feeling like a cutting room floor Disney princess. Here’s to many more days like it next summer.