From the Perspective of a Crab

Long before my beach itself became a Dumpster, I was intrigued by the people who would, night after night, scour the overflowing trash cans that stood on the border between cement and sand, as a sort of reminder that the human world stopped there, and the marine world began here. This placement seemed to be a fairly effective preventative measure against the pollution of my habitat; apart from the few stray cans that missed the target and the occasional paper napkin that lazily flapped its way across the sand, I never really had any close encounters with the contents of the bins. However, little by little, that all began to change after the commencement of a steady influx of litter from a mysterious source: the ocean.

At one point, we had lots of annoying daytime visitors who would pick me up and carry me around if I wasn't hidden well enough. Now, it's just me, isolated in a city of plastic. The seagulls have taken everyone else.

I used to be what you could call a prime consumer. The ocean gave me food: clams, snails, barnacles...you name it. And in return, I took my place in the circle of life, like all other animals. But now, I've been reduced to a post-apocalyptic "scavenger": "I live from the refuse of others" (Eighner). The beach has become my dumpster, and I am forced to pick apart whatever appears to be edible, all the while avoiding entrapment by a particularly tough bit of plastic.

So..."What is safe to eat?" (Eighner).

Sometimes, a can will wash up on shore, completely encrusted in barnacles. If I'm lucky, there will be a sea urchin or two inside. That is always a good day. But other times, my lunch will be trapped inside a bottle or a box with a flimsy lid; if I'm not careful, I can get stuck inside. That happened once. I must also watch out for the quality of the food. Sometimes, I'll see a reasonably fresh sand dollar stuck between a rusty can and a rock, so I'll make my way over; however, by the time I reach it, it's already dried out (especially if it's a particularly hot, sunny day). The disappointment is almost as bad as the hunger. 

I'm really not sure how much longer I'll last; every day it gets more and more difficult to reach the water.