Dear Abby,
I am currently helping my demented parents stay in their home. It's kind of stressful and we are all getting crabby. What should I do?
-signed, Crabby in Port Townsend.

Dear Crabby,
You are obviously in need of a reality check. Stop feeling sorry for yourself - you are not a crab! Crabs are invertebrates, so get your spine in gear and head to the nearest beach. Find some real crabs and get your perspective back!
-signed, Dear Abby.

Well that was real good advice I thought, so I went down to North Beach here in Port Townsend on a minus tide, and looked for crabs. I was soon up to my toes in crabs
Puget Sound (and the larger environs of the Salish Sea) is crab rich. North Beach, with a mix of rocky/ cobble shore and sand, is a particularly rich little patch of biodiversity in the marine biology department. Without hardly trying I was able to find at least a dozen diverse species of crabs. Pretty interesting.
A life long tidal shore explorer, I've been crab watching a long time, but the other day might have been my best crab day ever, or at least for about 40 years ( back in my youth, including high school I was really into marine biology. Alas, that was before I kept a journal, such as I do).
One particularly interesting crab I found under a rock is that wonderful weirdo, the Turtle Crab (Cryptolithodes sitchensis) which as far as I remember I'd never seen before. The one I found was a real whopper, for a Turtle Crab, about 4 inches across. It looked like a piece of oblong wave washed porcelain - like a piece of stone, the legs all totally hidden beneath the shell. Under the same rock was a crab in the same family, but totally different in appearance, the Hapalogaster - looking like a sort of stocky spider crab completely covered with coarse golden bristles. Pretty cool. I could go on.
My favorite crab? The one on my plate!
I grew up crabbing, off various piers and beaches ( interesting how my family is now currently so crabby), and never turn down an opportunity to eat a crab.I love 'em.
" Crows do it, Gulls do it, All sorts of other birds do it, Let's do it, let's eat a crab!"
to the tune of Cole Porter's 'Let's do it (lets fall in love) '.
Crabby Gibsonin Port Townsend Wa