Still, the town survives. What keeps Slaughter Beach alive is its love for nature, a passion for the Atlantic Ocean, a fondness for Delaware Bay, and a respect for the tidal marsh that borders the town. Town councilman Ron Annett has lived in Slaughter Beach for more than six years and loves it. We've got the best of both worlds. Homes line the gently curving shoreline like a string of skyboxes.
Residents here have four-season tickets to some of nature's most spectacular shows.
The first performance begins in the spring with the influx of thousands of spawning American horseshoe crabs. Each crab lays as many as 80,000 tiny sea foam green eggs to be fertilized by waiting male crabs. Enter the birds. As if on cue, countless hundreds of migratory shorebirds famished by their flight from the tip of South America arrive at the shore, blanketing the beach in search of the tapioca-sized eggs that lay buried in shallow nests in the sand. Hugely territorial, their raucous squabbling is both awe-inspiring and deafening.