One Summer Evening

We were an eclectic troop of teachers, businesspeople, housewives, artists, novelists, plumbers, lawyers, ecologists, accountants, children’s authors, and social workers.  Led by Glenn Gauvry of the Ecological Research & Development Group (ERDG), we had each signed up to witness one of nature’s most spectacular rites of spring – an orgy of arthropods.  The annual mating call had sounded and tens of thousands of ancient creatures had heeded its siren echoes – scraping their way up out of the depths to frolic in front of several wide-eyed voyeurs who were recording their every move and every action.

            I guess if you want to have group sex, an isolated beach in Delaware is as good a place as any.

            As we strolled up the beach we watched transfixed as couples mated on every stretch of sandy real estate they could find.  Almost alien in appearance, these sub-marine “tanks” plowed their way out of the water, up the beach, and into each other with all the delicacy of a frenzied herd of bull elephants drunk on fermented fruits.  There were the usual twosomes and threesomes, and occasionally we would come across a foursome, a fivesome, and even one over-stimulated sixsome – a coupling which, I am sure, would have put most adult film stars to shame.  Cameras clicked and notes were scribbled as we traipsed through rippling waves to watch these critters perform – each of them totally oblivious to our presence and each totally absorbed in a ritual propelled by tides and temperatures and hormones…forces as old as time itself.

For millennia after millennia these crabs and their ancestors have been locked in an eternal embrace – passing their genes and their ancestry from one generation to the next.  Each of us knew we were short-term witnesses to a perpetual spectacle that has been taking place since, well, since almost forever – a spectacle full of awe and mystery and the passion of persistence.

It is, most hopefully, a never-ending story.