Does She Know Something About The Weather?

  While it seems early for them to do so, the fiddler crabs are making their way up the hillside.  Normally, this departure from the mucky marsh takes place in August.  Then, the critters vacate their muddy tunnels and work their way up the hill.  They even go as far as the paved road which is some eight hundred feet or so from where they need to be.  The fiddler crabs do this mass, mini "migration" at odd times.

  The reasoning behind their move is still up in the air.  No one has been able to convince me of their true motive.  Some folks suggest that the crabs are searching for mates.  This is an odd idea as the entire mating and egg-laying process involves the damp marsh areas.  Other folks state that perhaps the crabs are in search of food.  Well, to answer that, fiddler crabs eat algae and bacteria from the marsh and also filter tiny particles of food from sand and mud.  They need the water to help with the filtering process.  Then there are the folks who say that the crabs migrate to higher ground when they sense that a storm is near.  Hurricanes flood the marshes and hence flood the crabs dens.  In an odd way, this makes more sense than the other claims.  If a fiddler crab can truly "feel" the change in barometric pressure, perhaps they can foretell when a storm is about to hit.  A few of the old-timers around here still cling to this belief and who am I to question them?  Common lore has it that the crabs will seek higher ground about two to three days before a storm is to brush through an area.  Once they leave their marshy home, they dig a new burrow in their newly selected site.  That same bit of lore states that the distance the crabs go inland correlates to the severity of a hurricane.  

  In viewing the weather forecast, I see that there are a couple of tropical storms that need watching.  For now, none are predicted to hit here.  The fiddler crabs, however, are on a hike.  Several have been found as far up the hillside as the board path and one adventurous little lady made it into the Small Gardens.  I sure hope she was a bit disoriented and is not adept at foreseeing the future!  I do not need a hurricane at the moment.