Our Ecologically-Challenged Toddler

Ogunquit Beach, Maine: As Don and I relax in our beach chairs and munch our sand-covered beach snacks, Jane sits nearby, cheerfully scooping sand into an orange bucket. Margot glances up from her nine-hour effort to dig a person-sized hole which, when completed, is meant to reveal an entire community of crabs who just happen to be buried under four or five feet of totally packed sand. Observing sister's actions (recall: Jane is scooping sand into a bucket - while at the beach). Margot races over, knocks the shovel from Jane's fat little hand, and screams: "Janieeeeee!! That's not a bucket for putting sand in, THAT IS A CRAB HABITAT!!!"

I am, of course, in favor of protecting crab habitats, particularly where they are at risk of being destroyed by rampaging toddlers. That said, Jane was actually not a complete idiot to have taken the orange bucket for, well, an orange bucket. Not only were there no crabs in the bucket, but there were no crabs anywhere. At all. We'd been there for hours with no sign of a single crab; in fact, I don't think we've ever seen a crab at that beach.

And, if there had been crabs, I'm about 100% certain that Margot would not have been remotely interested in touching - let alone catching - them in order to populate the habitat/bucket. Still, in Margot's defense: once you've established a crab habitat in the hope that some crabs just might show up, you really cannot have people messing with the crabs' ecosystem by adding things like, say, sand.