Word: crab
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...crouch low near the water's edge, you can see in the shallows of $ the high tide an awesome spectacle that has been recurring since before Tyrannosaurus rex roamed the earth: the mating dance of the horseshoe crab, one of nature's ugliest and kinkiest creatures...
With the full-moon tides each May and June, tens of thousands of crabs swarm ashore like magic. Skittering shadows the size of an elephant's hoof, they mingle in piles along the water's edge. The sandy shoreline becomes the site of a vast, squabbling, tumultuous crab orgy...
Swatting at a bug on his neck, Botton, who has studied the crab for twelve years, climbs the steps to a shoreline lab, where he is running an experiment to create horseshoe-crab babies in petri dishes. Directing a visitor to a microscope, he points out a wiggling, green horseshoe-crab embryo about the size of a large pinhead. "The little ones are cute," he concedes. But the parents? "When they get this big," he says, "it's just difficult to get emotionally attached...
Delaware Bay's prime breeding beaches are also a burial ground. Thousands of the crabs lie dead, overturned by breaking waves, their hollow shells littering the sand like the discarded helmets of a defeated German battalion. Just yards away, oblivious to the noxious stench of rotting crabs, migratory shorebirds feast on exposed crab eggs, consuming about 100 tons in just a few weeks...
...with Australia's Prime Minister Bob Hawke, the President hacked around the scruffy Andrews Air Force Base golf course in suffocating heat. True, he had enjoyed roast saddle of veal Perigourdine at the state dinner, but by Wednesday he was off in Baltimore, downing a hot dog, some Maryland crab cakes and vanilla ice cream with his grandson, George P., 10, while the Orioles squeezed by the Toronto Blue Jays...