Today, however, we saw mother nature at her meanest. As we were walking the shore looking for shells, we noticed a family in the surf playing with something in a small, shallow hole. We turned around and walked over to see what it was. They had caught a large hermit crab in a gorgeous amber and tan shell. At first, we thought they were just looking at it and trying to get it to pinch onto another shell the mother was holding in her had for fun. Then, the mother waited, and we all watched as the hermit crab slowly came out of its shell. It didn't click with us what was going on until the mother shrieked and told her oldest to grab the shell the crab had left and scooped up the crab in a toy shovel. They coaxed the crab out of its shell to steal it! We stood there in shock as the mother hustled by us toward the deeper waters telling her (and us, I suppose) that she was going to put it back in the ocean. I couldn't believe it. The poor crab thought it was getting a new home and was then left naked and vulnerable, thrown into the ocean to be somebody else's prey. All for a shell. A shell that will probably sit on someone's shelf and collect dust. James could tell that I wanted to do something so he told us to keep walking and not think about it. I mean I could rationalize it as "survival of the fittest" or that the crab is feeding another animal and ensure that animal can live another day. I might be able to do that if it wasn't a human that swindled the crab out of its home. For nothing more than decor, too. If I wasn't such an introspective person, I wouldn't have looked at it as a perfect example of humans taking advantage of nature without a thought to consequences. But I did.

Why can't we just be happy with the shells that aren't being used? Because they aren't perfect? Something created them thinking they were perfect to them.

That's good enough for me.