It was a couple of days before I could get away from the
ship again. Frederick dropped me off at
Club Fred, where AUV was lounging in the shade, hooked up by a wire to his
solar cells, which hummed in the bright evening sunlight. The sun was just going down. Nearby, Honk was sitting on the egg, looking
nervously from side to side.
“How’s it going, Honk?”
I asked.
“She’s moving around in there, I just know it; I can feel
it, I can hear it; she’s jumping and scratching and bumping and she’s going to
break out any day!” Honk was a little
excited.
Honk
“Well, that’s great,” I said. And how about you, AUV?”
“Charged and ready,” AUV buzzed. “Where do you want to go?”
“The TIGHARs have been talking about crabs…..”
“There are crabs on all parts of the island.”
“Yes, but it seems like there are lots down by the Seven
Site….”
“Oh, THOSE crabs.”
“What’s special about them?”
“Get aboard and I will show you.”
We zoomed out through the channel among the coral heads to
the open lagoon, and then way down past where we’d searched for Clyde’s
airplane. Finally AUV cruised up to a
sandbar. There was a huge green pile of
cut-up plants on it.
“What’s that?” I
asked.
“Scaevola pile,”
AUV buzzed. “Made by the TIGHARs,
cutting plants off the Seven Site. Walk
up that trail and you will find the crabs.”
“Uh… OK.”
“Or they will find you. Good
luck.”
I walked up the trail through the thick brush – the Scaevola – and pretty soon I came out
on the site that Grandpa Tom and his friends were digging during the day. Like I said in my first letter, it’s kind of
a ridge, but without any houses on it.
You could fit five or six houses on the area they’d cleared, if you
wanted to; it was a big place, and they’d cut down all the Scaevola on it and dragged it away. There were strings and ropes and long strips
of colorful tape all over the place, and canopies to give the TIGHARs some
shade while they were digging. Their
tools were piled up under a tree – screens, shovels, trowels, chain saws, stuff
like that. But now, at night, the place
belonged to….
The crabs! There were
hundreds of them! Thousands! Big ones the size of my foot and little ones
the size of my finger-bone. Each one had
a shell, but it wasn’t his own shell, that he’d grown himself (or
herself). It was a sea shell that he (or
she) had crawled into and carried around with him (or her). They all went “clatter clatter clatter” as
they dragged their shells over the coral.
And they all seemed to be coming to me!
Hermit Crabs at the Seven Site
“Where’s the food?”
The first one to reach me asked.
“Food! Food! Food!” they all clattered, all talking over
each other, and crawling all over each other, too.
“I don’t have any…..”
“Food! Food! FOOD!”
“I don’t….”
“The TIGHARs always bring us food!” one said.
The others just kept clattering “Food!
Food!”
“The TIGHARS ARE food!” another one said. “We just gotta catch ‘em!”
Crabs trying to eat Grandpa Tom
“Are YOU food?” He
asked.
“No!” I shouted, and knocked him off my leg. He bounced on the ground. “I’m plastic!” I told them.
“Do we like plastic?”
asked the one I’d knocked off my leg, struggling to get right-side up
“Not much,” another one said, “but sometimes food’s in
plastic.”
“You think there’s food in him?” another one asked,
clattering along toward me.
I thought I should try to change the subject.
“Look, guys, maybe I can go back to the ship and get you
some food…..”
“FOOD! FOOD!”
“What do you like to eat?
What do the TIGHARs bring you?”
“Oreos!”
“Pringles!”
“Chicken and cheese sandwiches!”
“Rice!”
“Mice!”
“Don’t be dumb; the TIGHARs don’t bring mice!”
“No, but the rats come out when the TIGHARs come.”
“Yeah, and the TIGHARs bring FOOD!”
“FOOD! FOOD! FOOD!”
“OK, fellows,” I said, backing away down the trail toward
the lagoon. “I’ll… uh… be right back
with… oh, maybe some Oreos…..”
“OREOS! OREOS! OREOS!”
“I WANT PRINGLES!”
“I WANT A TIGHAR LEG”
“OREOS!!!”
They were clattering and yelling and climbing all over each
other. It was my chance to get away so I
turned and ran as fast as I could back to the lagoon, jumping over piles of
shells and sticks and dodging crabs that came out of the darkness to grab at my
foot bones.
“I’m plastic!” I yelled, jumping down onto the sandbar. AUV was sitting there in the water, humming a
little tune.
“Now,” he buzzed, “do you know what is special about these
crabs?”
The Seven Site: Where the Crabs are Hungry
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