For god’s sake. Their bent little legs are only two inches in length (at best!), and I, with legs four feet longer, simply cannot out-run those little burnt buggers. Surely their elongated eyes can see that I wish them no harm. I just want these cute, cubed decapods to feel safe long enough to halt for a close-up photo shoot. But hell NO! They’ll have none of that.

Not to worry I told myself. I have a bigger brain and hence devised a sneaky, and if I may say so myself, brilliant plan. (Or so I thought.)

It began with my willingness to forgo some of my dinner. I set aside a rather large slab of my tasty picudo (the Spanish name for sailfish) for a few days. This allowed the fishy flesh to rot, bringing forth its fragrance to the perfect aromatic level in hopes of persuading those mini, red runners to halt for a nibble. Oh, how clever am I.

There is no way this isn’t going to work!

With the bait laid temptingly outside a few burrows, I lay prone on the beach sand (hmmmm, come to think of it, not unlike the bait) patiently awaiting the perfect photographic op when a disturbing feeling began to rise. This sensation, like a surging tide, began to drench my smugness.

Can those clawed creatures discern the difference between me and the lure? That’s when it started. You know what I mean. That eerie feeling one gets when one feels something creeping over the skin. And no matter the flinching and mental scolding (because, after all, you know nothing’s there), the mind still sends a creeped-out alert.

Over-powering my body’s desire to leap up and dash away, escaping the hundreds of lairs surrounding me, I steadied my camera and began to focus on a singular hole where I could see teeny, tiny claw points poking at the edges, fondling flesh as his wary eye peered out.

My dinner time imaginings from two days before, when I sacrificed a portion of my fish dinner, floated to the surface of my mind’s eye. Finally, I thought to myself, my flawless plan is working.

The bait I placed so precisely enticed a little fella to crawl up and out of his safe den.

I readied my camera when suddenly, I was startled into life’s cruel reality.  As my finger pressed downward, a dark shadow swooped in blurring the right edge of my lens. In a flash, a feathered assassin snagged the poor, baby crab. The mockingbird’s chomp was captured by my camera’s eye.

Not at all what I had in mind. Not at all.