Hitchikers

Byron has rekindled a previous passion for his salt water aquarium. One morning I poked my sleepy head above deck, hoping that Byron had already retrieved a cup of coffee from the marina restaurant.

Instead he proudly handed me a plastic container full of sea water. Not exactly what I had in mind the first thing in the morning. As I adjusted my focus on the container, things went from blurry to mildly fuzzy. Ok, I'm starting to make out an outline of some sort. I turn the container for a different angle. Thats better, now I can see a pair of eyes and legs moving frantically. It's no wonder I couldn't see anything at first, it was practically invisible. It's a little shrimp and he is almost transparent except for those jet black eyes. What's that behind him? It's a tiny little crab!

Byron was walking up to the restaurant to get a cup of coffee when he caught sight of the shrimp critter high and dry on the dock. He thought it was dead and in true boy fashion, he poked a finger to see. He was surprised to find it's little limbs moving very weakly. He immediately found a container, scooped up some sea water and put his patient into the aquatic ward. Not too far away he found the little crab and added it to the collection. By the time I saw them later, they were well on their way to recovery. Byron said he wanted to keep them a while until he could show them to Robert, our three year old friend staying on the boat next to ours. I think he was secretly enjoying having his own personal aquarium.

We figured out what must have happened to our dehydrated little patients. Floating debris in the bay must have gotten caught up against the dock on one side as the tide was going out. The marina employees, instead of scooping up the stuff and throwing it out, just carried it across the dock and dumped it back into the water on the other side. Clearly, they intend that to let the tide continue to move the debris away. Our little hitchhikers must have been attached to some driftwood and got knocked off onto the dock in mid transit.

The next time I looked in on the patients, I discovered that there were visitors in the recovery ward! Things were looking a bit crowded. There were at least a dozen guppy fish of every shape darting back and forth. I looked at Byron and in that "I'm innocent" tone he says "What? They're friends of the family." I wasn't convinced. The clutching appendages of our patients did not seem to inspire close family contact. Later we discovered a couple of "family members" belly up at the bottom. I'm sure it wasn't helpful that Byron made references to garlic and butter while looking at them. It's definitely time to release the patients and send the visitors home.
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Debris is always getting caught in and around things. We had some stuck between two bumpers separating our boat from the dock. The bumpers were loose and Byron lifted one up to let the muck flow past. He set the bumper on the dock and a three inch long crab jumped off, ran to the end of the dock and leaped off like a lemming.