A Story About Crabs (the kind you eat!🤣)

I went through grade school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 525 Rodney Drive! 504-725-8104!! Isn’t it funny how we remember our address and phone number as children? Go play outside! Was the admonishment, so that’s what I did. And as long as I knew my address and phone number, no worries! And when it started to get dark and the street lamps went on, I went home. My father was a Dr. Not a medical doctor but an animal biologist. He specialized in woodcock, grouse and Canadian Geese. He was a professor at LSU. I grew up trapping and banding birds. And I did a whole whole lot of fishing and crabbing. We spent a lot of time at Grand Isle Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. We went crabbing every day. You know those 3-tiered screen thingies you can hang and put vegetables in? Well, that’s what a crab net looks like, minus the 2 smaller tiers. So we would head out with our crab nets and bucket (my brother and I). We also had one piece of raw bacon between us. What we would do is put the bacon in the middle of the net and let the chain we held in our hands go completely slack so it was in the floor of the ocean. There were a lot rocky lagoons. And we would stand in thigh deep water (as a child) with the round screen-net between our feet. As soon as we felt any movement between our feet, we would pull up our chain, and there would be a crab. We would walk up the beach and throw the crab in the bucket. And on we would go. And it wouldn’t be any time at all and we would have a bucket full of crabs. When I first went crabbing with my brother, I didn’t understand how it

Was that we could put so many crabs in one normal sized bucket and none of crabs would escape! They were dexterous with their claws. Why didn’t they try to escape? And then one day I just sat by the bucket and watched the crabs. And I found out why none of them ever escaped. You see, they would try! They would work so hard getting on top, then hinging a claw over the side. And the other crabs would grab hold of the crab that was almost free and pull that crab back down. It happened over and over and over again.

As I became older, I began to realize that people can be alot like crabs. Even, or perhaps especially our close family, loved ones and even friends. I

have at various times in my life, when I am in the midst of change and growth, I will note a

tendency for those around me to reach up

and try to pull me back in the bucket.

I am a very strong survivor. I’m not going to end up back in the bucket!!!

🌹

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A Story About Crabs (the kind you eat!🤣)