The mating rituals of the horseshoe crab are a bit bothersome when trying to take a swim in the bay at a Delaware beach like I did this past week.  But really what gets me about these little water creatures is that they are not little at all.  And they don’t look like crabs.
   
    So yes, little compared to the size of me, but they look like flat basketballs, only grayish brown and not orange.  Their tail is long and looks like the weird hair style of the kid that sat next to me in kindergarten. 

They don’t bother people.  For that matter they could not be bothered by people either.  I love animals that ignore you.  It’s always better than getting in your way. 

    So they look like squished basketballs, huh?  Well only sort of.  They really look like robots.  Imagine, they have mechanisms underneath the hard shield on top.  They have a joint on their back to move their tails I guess that looks like a robots hinge. 

    They swim like robots, moving with the currents and sometimes trying to dig into the sand.  And when they dig they just walk into the sand and it moves under them. 

    Their feet too, if that’s what you want to call them.  How many do they have? I saw a dead one and it looked like it had more feet than it should.  For that matter they don’t even look like feet, but maybe the tread on a tank. 

    Is it that they are related to dinosaurs?  They are, aren’t they?  I could only hope so, I love dinosaurs and I petted a horseshoe crab.  It could be almost like petting a water dinosaur.  Well maybe.

    Anyway enough about dinosaurs, although I love them dearly.  A horseshoe crab is either a robot or an animal that should be a robot.  Is a crab even an animal?