double-booking your day

We were up at 5 am yesterday for a quick shower, breakfast, and a drive to the Delaware Bay for some beach-hopping to put horseshoe crabs back in the water as they start their Spring spawning, some beach combing, a picnic, and a quick three hour drive home to shower and change for a big fundraiser at the art center last night.

With the change of the tides lots of horseshoe crabs get stranded until the next tide, and if they are upside down and unable to flip themselves they can die before the return of the water. We spent time gently carrying them to the water by the edges of their 'shells' (their hard exoskeletons) and gently set each of them by the water's edge so that they could return to their element.

Lots of people go to the shore to help them, and it is important to always handle them gently by their shells and not their tails, as sometimes their tails can break... making it impossible for them to flip themselves upright. They cannot bite you or hurt you and are fascinating animals. Please, please never throw them. If you are still squeamish about handling them, just gently flip them right side up on the sand to give them a better chance of surviving til the next high tide. Just Flip Em.

The survival of the horseshoe crabs is vitally linked to the survival of migratory birds like the highly endangered red knots who will be arriving any day now from the southern tip of South America on their annual journey to the arctic to breed. Visitors can view the birds from a distance at Port Mahon and the Dupont Nature Center, but it is important not to disturb their feeding by walking on the beaches so that they can bulk up and continue their tightly timed journey north. Their survival depends on this feeding stop. Learn more about this important interconnected relationship here...... Crash: A Tale of Two Species.

After a three hour drive home and a quick shower and change and we headed to the art center for a big fundraiser last night for VisArts and CASE (The Center for Adoption, Support, and Education). The fundraiser featured entertainment and lots of interesting silent auction packages including a 7 night stay in Maui, a Sanibel Island vacation, a Rooftop event for 250 people, gift baskets, art, and a Wild Watercolor Workshop for six donated by yours truly. (My workshop received several bids and the winner of the package donated $240.00 to the fundraiser.)

It was a great evening for networking and meeting new people, and we were delighted to host CASE for this wonderful joint venture. A very busy and especially wonderful day that combined time for work and fun, and we fell into bed exhausted last night!