Big ASS crab story time

[cassyblue]

Growing up in South Florida, I encountered a lot of interesting wildlife from gators to land crabs. Now, land crabs are BIG ASS crabs that migrate en masse to the ocean from wherever their holes are. In the past few years there hasn’t been big land crab migrations. But when I was little, they would just come out all over and people would come with buckets and scoop them (Free Crab Meat yolo). Now the thing is land crabs are big ass crabs which means they have big ass pinchers. Their pinchers are strong enough to pop a tire.

The crabs waiting to take out a car. 

when I said they were big, I wasn’t kidding. This one is a pretty impressive big ass crab:

So if you know anything about me, I just had to catch one of the fuckers. When you’re 8 you dont really have a lot of sense your head about grabbing things. I was the catcher of lizards, the annoyer of frogs, the grabber of snakes. 

Now the thing about land crabs is that they are not very bright. They would get into the garage and not figure out how to get out and die and STINK to high hell. One time one got into the house THROUGH the garage and my mother chased it with a broom while my sister (3 at the time) stood on the chair screaming at the top of her lungs. 

HALP, we’re stuck in a corner we don’t know what to do besides snip snip. 

So to catch a land crab, I simply had to get it backed into a corner which required watching and waiting for a victim. There was plenty of potential victims, but they escaped me chasing them. Then one day, I managed to scoot one into the corner of the patio where it couldn’t get away. Now, one simply does not grab the crab from the front because you will get snipped and these bastards can latch on and not let go. I grabbed it from the back and shoved into a bait bucket my dad let me use to keep lizards in. 

Now you see, the bait bucket was one of these. 

And the deal with these bait buckets is that the black door OPENS such that the black door GOES INTO THE BUCKET. So I have this PISSED off land crab that’s almost half the size of the bait bucket. I realize. I can’t get it out. Oh fuck I can’t get it out. So I go tell my mom that I caught a land crab. My mom was like How did you catch that? I was like I grabbed it. My mom is like, ok, where is the crab. I show the bait bucket. My mom is like, sorry I’m not reaching in there. 

So out of help on that front. I started to try to scoot the crab around so it would stop wedging itself behind the door with a stick. Eventually, I managed to get it into the bottom of the bucket. Land crabs climb btw so yeah it was trying to get to the top. 

I shove the black door back. 

and then…

I shake the bucket as violently as I can until the crab flies out and is momentarily stunned. Then it runs away. After that, I never tried to catch another land crab. Not even to scoot into a bucket to get out of the garage. The push broom was reserved for removing le crabs. 

Comments

[cassyblue]

haha arthropods are just like that