Word: beach
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...book that arose out of these emotions is Clancy's most politically sophisticated and philosophically complex. (Beach readers, have no fear; this is not Sartre.) There are no direct references to Iran-contra, no arms-for- hostages deals and no Ollie Norths; Clancy is too accomplished a craftsman for such overt gambits. The closest parallel comes in the fictional National Security Adviser, Vice Admiral James Cutter, who is reminiscent of John Poindexter. Almost from the moment the admiral is introduced, readers can sense Clancy's scorn: "Cutter was the sort of sailor for whom the sea was a means...
Before hitting the beach, some lucky crabs, whose tough, circular shells conjure images of tiny oceangoing Darth Vaders, pair up, with the smaller male crabs locking themselves atop the females' spiny shells with special pincers. For many less fortunate males, who vastly outnumber the females, the frenzy is more like a wretched high school dance: they form a stag line on the beach. Then, when a female, bearing a suitor on her back, wallows up and begins to burrow in the sand where she will lay about 4,000 eggs, as many as 15 lusty males struggle in the waves...
...real prehistoric," says Fordham University biologist Mark Botton, a New York Giants cap perched on his curly black hair, as he ambles down the beach just feet from the frenzy. "We call it a random-collision process," he says, describing the orgiastic mating ritual of the world's largest population of horseshoe crabs. "It's just like billiard balls...
...dressed in a dainty blue sundress, is lugging two horseshoe crabs by their spiny tails toward the water. Nearby, her mother Emma, 35, peers at one until it wriggles and then gingerly hauls it away. She and her daughter line up the crabs, side by side, along the beach just above the incoming tide. Besides saving some crabs, they have also tidied the sand, once littered with topsy-turvy animals. Quips Alison's mom: "Instead of mowing my grass, I come out here and clear my beach...
Theresa Tierney, sweating from her early-morning walk on the beach, carefully treads past the mating crabs. Each summer Tierney and her family trade the Philadelphia heat for a bay-front seat at crab-mating time. As a live crab trundles by her feet, she snatches it up by its spiny tail to reveal an underbelly of writhing legs and pulsing book gills. Despite years of such intimate contact with the crabs, she is still unable to unlock one vital secret. Murmurs a slightly embarrassed Tierney: "I can't even tell what sex it is." Her husband Matt...