In Brunswick on Georgia’s coast the other day, I went down to the edge of the salt marsh at the Marshes of Glynn Overlook Park. As I approached, dozens of fiddler crabs feeding there scurried into their burrows, cautiously re-emerging only when they perceived the “danger” had passed.
It made me smile, because it made me think of Christmas.
So, how do fiddler crabs, abundant denizens of the salt marsh, trigger Christmas memories?
It goes back to my early boyhood on Johns Island, S.C., near Charleston. Our home was next to a salt marsh with twisting tidal creeks. Across the marsh from us was a small island — or marsh hammock, as some call it — densely covered with red cedar trees (which favor the sweet, limey soil) and harboring countless fiddlers.
Around mid-December, my older brothers and I would pole our old bateau at high tide over to the island to cut a red cedar for our Christmas tree.
Back across the marsh, we took the tree up to the house, where our mother supervised erecting it. One December, we brought the tree through the front door and laid it in the hallway to wait for Mama to decide where to put it. Then, Mama shrieked.
Scooting across the floor were four or five fiddler crabs that somehow had gotten hung up in the tree and come home with us and were now making their escape.
Mama had no fear of fiddler crabs, but she definitely did not want them in the house — especially if they died and started smelling. “Get them out,” she ordered.
The next 15 minutes was a great commotion as we tried to recapture fiddlers hiding under furniture and other dark places. Afterward, we all laughed uproariously at the spectacle. So, I still smile when I see fiddler crabs and think about the Christmas when they got loose in the house.
IN THE SKY: From David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer: Winter officially begins on Monday at 11:48 p.m. — the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
The Ursid meteor shower, visible this weekend through early next week, peaks on Sunday night with about 15 meteors per hour — in the east from about midnight until dawn.The moon will be full on Christmas Day — the “Snow Moon,” as the Cherokee called December’s full moon. Mercury is low in the west around dusk. Bright Venus rises out of the east about two hours before sunrise. Mars rises out of the east about four hours before sunrise. Jupiter is in the east around midnight.
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