Beach Finds: A Sad Story

"It's miraculous!" Alden yelled, coming up from the beach, telling us we needed to come look. Indeed, it was a bit of a miracle. He had found a really big crab, way up in the middle of the beach (way up meaning way above the low tide line - usually crabs are only found around the low tide line, and even then, not often. ) It was an impressive specimen, but, I was a little worried, since it really is not common to find such a thing.

Mom and Alden and I spent some time checking it out, and then thought we really should help it get back down to the water, where we thought it really needed to be. Poking and prodding didn't do much, and eventually I picked it up and took it down to the water. Even that did not produce much reaction.

We continued to be worried.

Eventually we got it fully out and submerged in the water, and it did swim off, with some energy. But, as I said, we were worried, it just did not seem to be doing what a crab should do...

Later, Catharine told a story of seeing a sad crab, during her late afternoon swim, being eaten by a seagull. Mom and I had a pretty good idea of who that crab was. We were a little worried about telling Alden, but thought we needed to tell him the truth (and when we had been hanging out with the crab earlier, we had told him we were worried about it, so we hoped it would not be too much of a blow to hear the end of the story).

His reaction was fantastic - mature and philosophical:

"well, seagulls need to eat, too."