The Horseshoe Crab Happening
By: Keely Hemmel
Smack, Crack, go the small gray eggs that contain soon-to-be baby horseshoe crabs as the malicious seagulls peck at the baseball-sized clump of eggs in the sand. “We have to help them!” Lainey bellows as she runs to the poor, defenseless animals.
“No! Don’t touch them! You will mess up the cycle of life,” Jeff shoots back. “They don’t need our help, they have been around for 475 million years! They were alive 100 million years before the dinosaurs!” Lainey stops in her tracks, turns around with a face as red as a strawberry. “Would YOU wan’t to be pecked at and eaten when you were little? NO, you would not! I am NOT going to mess up the cycle of life, I am just going to get the seagulls away from the eggs so they can at least live for a minute. So, are you helping or not?”
Lainey waits anxiously, before Jess finally gives in. “FINE! Even though the female lays thousands of eggs at a time. I don’t think a few eaten eggs will be missed much in the marine world,” he snorts. “Hurry up and go find some way to distract the seagulls, and I will make sure the eggs stay buried,” says Lainey.
Jeff searches the beach anxiously while trying to find some other way to distract the gulls, when it comes to him that there are many possibilities.! He could get some people on the beach to run at the creatures. He could find people throwing food at the gulls and ask them to go to a spot where the crabs aren’t, so they’ll be lures away.
He looks out of the corner of his eye and sees some obnoxious, loud little kids. “Can you see those seagulls over there?” “Yea,” the smallest of the three kids says. “Well, can you go chase them for me?” The kids nod their heads in agreement.
Jeff and the kids head over and start running in a big circle, singing and screaming. Lainey has already managed to dig a big enough hole in the sand to the defenseless animals covered.
After two stressful minutes, Lainey has successfully buried the eggs. “I still can’t believe that you tried to help them. There are tons of them out here,” Jess says. “That is true, but the number of horseshoe crabs is going down very fast due to fisherman over-harvesting them and use them for eel bait. In fact, their population hasn’t been in this much trouble since that last Ice Age!” Lainey answers. “Oh, now I feel bad for not wanting to help them,” Jeff adds.
Jeff and Lainey were now ready to reward themselves with a cold treat for all their efforts. The two friends walk down the beach in the search of ice cream. Behind them a group of seagulls have already begun devouring the unfortunate eggs that Lainey and Jeff had tried so hard to save…
2013 Winner
Keeley Hemmel
Grade: 6th
School: Madeira Beach Fundamental School, Madeira Beach, FL
Medium: Story