That looks like a different beastie than what I grew up catching on the Gulf Coast. Different species? Genus? Or is that a somewhat battered individual?
If your pet crawled into something and expired, you will soon know. I speak from experience!
When I was a struggling college student my roommate and I would catch crawdads in a local rivulet ("stream" would be an exaggeration), boil them like crabs, pull off and shell the tails, and fix them with pasta and pesto sauce.
Mmmmmmm, poverty food! Good with beer.
July 18, 2012 at 10:46 AM
John Mosley said...
We live close enough to Louisiana for them to be available in town seasonally. Rice growers on the coast have learned to make them a second crop in the same paddy with rice.
@ G Robinson. It's amazing what tastes good when you're broke and starving.
I remember those things looking a lot bigger and scarier when I was a kid! I didn't like touching the muddy spots at the lake due to a fear of them. It's fun watching another generation doing the same things I did as a kid in the desert!
July 26, 2012 at 5:55 AM
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I forgot to mention in my past post that one of the highlights of the swimming was catching crawdads. With the extremely low water levels, plenty of mud was exposed, along with holes that the crawdads like to hide in. The kids quickly found their favorite spots and started catching them.
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Desert Boy wasn't so sure about actually picking up one of the crawdads with his bare hands. He tried using the shovel method, but didn't have much success. The convince-a-cousin-to-pick-it-up method worked for awhile, but eventually he was on his own, and had to give it a try.
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He doesn't look too sure of himself, does he? Probably for good reason. I don't consider crawdads to be particularly appetizing creatures--by any definition!
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Nevertheless, he did it. He was really proud of himself.
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He loaded it into a bucket and during a weak moment, I let him convince me to bring it home. Yep, we had a pet crawdad. Fortunately I get to use the word "had." Past tense. Our new pet survived a few hours. We didn't hold a burial for it. In fact, I'm not sure where it went. Maybe I don't want to know. I'm just thinking that one pet crawdad for the summer has met our quota of extraneous pets, and now we can go back to enjoying life with our awesome dog, Henry. He's a wee bit more appealing than the crawdad.
posted by Desert Survivor at 8:32 PM on Jul 17, 2012
4 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formThat looks like a different beastie than what I grew up catching on the Gulf Coast. Different species? Genus? Or is that a somewhat battered individual?
If your pet crawled into something and expired, you will soon know. I speak from experience!
July 17, 2012 at 10:48 PM
When I was a struggling college student my roommate and I would catch crawdads in a local rivulet ("stream" would be an exaggeration), boil them like crabs, pull off and shell the tails, and fix them with pasta and pesto sauce.
Mmmmmmm, poverty food! Good with beer.
July 18, 2012 at 10:46 AM
We live close enough to Louisiana for them to be available in town seasonally. Rice growers on the coast have learned to make them a second crop in the same paddy with rice.
@ G Robinson. It's amazing what tastes good when you're broke and starving.
July 20, 2012 at 1:00 PM
I remember those things looking a lot bigger and scarier when I was a kid! I didn't like touching the muddy spots at the lake due to a fear of them. It's fun watching another generation doing the same things I did as a kid in the desert!
July 26, 2012 at 5:55 AM