SAVE THE MARSHES AND WETLANDS
Over the long Labor Day weekend I worked on a brochure to broaden our base for membership to Friends of Walkers Pond, LTD. Yes, it took me that long because I'm an insecure profectionist. I just couldn't get those margins right.
We took the finished work to the printer. You probably want to know why I didn't do it myself…Because by the time I buy ink for the printer, good stock paper and spend a day folding a tri-fold paper, the cost is just about the same. Plus that, the professionals can do work in a few hours that would take me a week to finish. It's money well spent.
I put my work on the counter and the woman helping me folded her arms on the counter and was really looking at the pictures. Finally she said, " Where is this place?" I told her Montego Bay, Ocean City, and her face glowed. She grew up here. She remembered when our pond was a cove where they caught soft crabs. She reminisced about her childhood and how she and her dad would tie inner tubes to their bodies with a basket in it to gather the crabs. She said they had to step carefully and not step on a horseshoe crab hiding in the sand. She told us how the developer closed off the bay, ending their soft crabbing. They moved right after that.
This isn't the first time I was told about the soft crabbing in this area. There are many people living here today that have been here since this places inception.
When people wonder why we have so few crabs and fish we can now prove that without wetlands, marshes and good grass in the water there are no places for these creatures to breed and propagate.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to show the sloughing process of a crab! If we could get the salinity of the pond in proper proportions I wonder if we could do that? I've watched the metamorphosis of a butterfly, a wondrous occasion, and believe me the sloughing of a crab is mind-boggling. Have you ever seen a crab slough…would you like too?