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The Sad Fate of the Park Crabs

Today, I discovered the sun-bleached remains of a park crab. I profess that the remains brought a tear to my eye. I am not generally a sentimental man, but the loss of an entire species is an atrocity that I cannot bear.

The park crab, Cardisoma hortus, a terrestrial species twenty-five centimeters across on average, was hunted to extinction twenty years before I arrived in the City. According to back-issues of Neo-Urbana Natura, Cardisoma hortus was never a common sight, and was widely considered a relic of a time when the Park was wetter and warmer.

Twenty-two years ago, a dabbler in natural sciences named Horatio Clank discovered the delicate flavor of the park crab’s leg meat when his house cook mistook Clank’s specimens for the evening’s main course. News spread among the wealthy residents of the south Burroughs as such news does, along with the rumor (never proven scientifically) that the meat also stimulated the–ahem–baser energies of eldery gentlemen. One might say that the park crab was dealt a very bad hand indeed.

I’ve examined census data from a much more respectable naturalist, and the decline in the crab’s population is heartbreaking to witness even on paper. In four short years, the roving hordes of urchin children trapped and sold an entire species for mere nickels. It must be said that the crab did not help matters much with its habit of hanging from the low limbs of trees and swinging in the breeze as part of their mating rituals.

Still… I can’t help but hope that I might one day happen upon a living park crab, hidden somewhere deep within the brambles where the threat of bears and other dangers keep all but the most determined naturalists at bay. The Park is vast. I cannot say with absolute certainty that such a discovery is impossible.

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