The blue crab sits with appendages flexed at her sides, claws poised, hind swimming legs splayed. Her tough, brown, shell-like body is ridged with a row of short teeth; their serrated white coloring compliments the orange chelae that rest open beneath her mouthpieces. A deep azure extends outwards from the chasms of her leg joints, spreading along her stiff, segmented limbs. Two eyestalks poke through her carapace and twist through the water with intensity and purpose. Like a spring, she crouches, churning the water with her antennae, epipodites flashing wildly, hungrily.
Suddenly the crab is awakened. A wedge of flesh splashes against the surface of the water and she flies into motion like an odor-activated machine. She reaches upwards madly, claws grappling with the floating buoy of fish meat. Her parts seem disjointed yet powerful and unforgiving. Like two orange-tinted swords, her chelipeds crash against the tank, her tight suit of armor meeting the glass with a crack. Within seconds the crab skewers the meat, bringing it to her abdomen where she tears it to slivers. Then- quickly- the ragged scraps disappear into her horizontal mouthpieces; only a slight cloudiness in the water remains. A sudden stillness. Pacified, she plants herself on the ground, poised, intent.