Horseshoe Crab
Horseshoe crab is the oldest of all animals. He has been here since just after the earth formed through the coalescence and compression of billions of cubic meters of interstellar dust.
Horseshoe crab arrived as a seed planted in the center of a meteor that plummeted into earth's primordial ocean. There, the seed awakened, and out crawled horseshoe crab - the planet's sentinel creature.
Horseshoe crab arrived as a seed planted in the center of a meteor that plummeted into earth's primordial ocean. There, the seed awakened, and out crawled horseshoe crab - the planet's sentinel creature.
Underneath its brown shell, the crab is delicate. Its legs are soft, feeling the ocean's floor and using its modified front legs to collect food and pass it to its mouth.
Horseshoe crab's tail traces pathways in the sand. Infant snails, eels, manta rays and sea cucumbers follow the trails to learn what they are and how to live.
When the crab dies, it washes up on the shore and releases its blood. The blood seeps into the sand where it hardens and forms chunks of corlithian- the mineral used to treat sadness in whales. Its blood is blue - the only blue blood of any creature on earth. The first blood.
2 comments:
wow. deep.
...i must have first encountered your writing here back in 2010 when I told a friend about horseshoe crab and he told me to check your blog.
Fast forward to this weekend when I was with my son and we were looking at a horse shoe crab. We also got a pamphlet from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service (as the crab was tagged and we wished to track it). And your writing here popped into my head. Took some googling, but I found it.
I thought together they complement each other well. It has been printed so I can look back if it pops into my head again!
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