SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Hundreds of thousands of red baby crabs are invading the Cayman Islands in a seasonal migration that residents say is unusually heavy this year.

The crabs are blanketing roads, scurrying across yards and scratching their way up homes and buildings in a process that scientists say will last about a month.

"People living in the coast will have them everywhere," said Tim Austin, deputy director of the Cayman Islands' Environment Department, on Wednesday. "They get in houses, into your AC system. Anywhere there's a gap, they'll find it. They're trying to get somewhere where they'll live happily."

The baby crabs, which are smaller than a thumbnail, were born in the ocean a few weeks ago and are emerging along rocky shores, seeking forests and wetlands near the coast where they will remain until they reproduce and head back to sea to deposit their eggs, Austin said. While the babies are red, the species is known as the black land crab because of the dark purple color it takes on as it ages.

It is likely that the recent "supermoon" and low tides have made it easier for the baby crabs to reach land, which could help explain the increase this year, he said. Most of them are overrunning Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, two of three islands that make up the archipelago.

The baby crabs do not migrate every year, in part because of ocean currents, tides and wind conditions, but adult crabs migrate every year to the ocean during the start of the rainy season, usually in May. Their migration has already occurred.

The government urges people to try to avoid the crabs as they drive, but it is nearly impossible not to hit them.

"It's a minefield of flattened crabs. You'll just see hundreds of splats," said Jim Andrews, 48, who lives with his family in the southeast end of Grand Cayman.

His house has been invaded by crabs as well.

"This year, we just saw tons of the tiny little newborns," he said. "You can hear them crawling on the windowsills."

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Hundreds of thousands of baby red crabs invade Cayman Islands