WATER'S-EDGE IN HAITI 



of her sex in sight, some larger, but this particular 

 one worked magic. The frantic gesticulating and 

 waving on all sides would have stirred any blase 

 movie queen to appreciation. Food and danger 

 were forgotten. The only thing in the world was 

 to get one's ivory-white claw noticed, and then 

 gently to persuade Her to enter one's burrow. 

 The action was that of a mighty gesticulation, a 

 beckoning in five jerks, the last of which almost 

 threw the crab over on its back. When all the 

 male crabs in the colony were suddenly seized with 

 this frenzy of persuasion, the distant view was 

 exactly like that of a mob of cheering human 

 beings, the simile being all the more remarkable 

 because of the desperate and complete silence 

 which clothed the emotional outbursts of these 

 crustacean citizens. 



The difference between this gesture of the right 

 hand of passionate fellowship and that of shaking 

 the fist in the face of any passing male, was hardly 

 to be discerned. In the case of the courtship the 

 fiddler would often freeze into a statuesque pose 

 for three or four minutes at a time. And if any 

 man sneers at fiddler crabs because they are 

 inedible and hence unworthy of notice, let him try 

 to hold a sixty-pound weight at arm's length. 

 The crab's record is ten minutes. 



My Haitian fiddler crabs were christened sixty 

 years ago by a certain Dr. Smith, who called them 

 Uca mordax — from Uca, a native Brazilian name, 

 and a Roman's appreciation of their pinching 



65 



