A Crab's Tale

It was a fine day last week when my handsome single brother David bought a new crab net. He took it the nearby dock to test it. He scooped up two crabs who were ...busy.... threw the female back (the one with the earrings) and brought the male home to my kitchen sink and left it there.

After my two perfect children, the three things I love most in life are; old movies, the look of new snow at dawn, and crabs in the sink....

I love any crustaceans in the sink, but crab is my favorite. This one had "sandwich" written all over him. He reached his claws high up to threaten me as he ran back and forth across the rubber mat on the bottom of the sink in a pitiful attempt to attack the pot that was being filled with water.... his eyes were wildly rotating in different directions while his crablife passed before him. I looked him right in the eye that was looking at me and laughed sinisterly, " Arr, harr, harr...". And then it happened.

My beautiful daughter (then just eleven), came into the kitchen. She sized up the situation and began intervine to save marine life.

"Oh, Mom, he's so cute. You can't eat him. That's too cruel! You can't boil him alive! What did he ever do to you ?"

I pleaded my case. "He's part of the food chain, and tonight he's coming in just ahead of franks and beans."

Hey, I am sensitive to the preservation of marine life... I give money to Greenpeace, I always cut up the plastic rings that hold soda's so that mantees won't get them wrapped around their noses. I pointed out to her that no manatee has EVER drowned in my kitchen!

She engaged every eleven year old strategy she had. She would brush her teeth everyday without being nagged, she'd stop calling the Pound to come and put her brother to sleep, she'd shower using soap and the coute d'gras - she'd clean her room ! She was good...very good, but I held my ground as I decided whether to eat him on white or rye.

She stood at the sink between me and my crab. Like a Greenpeacer between a humpback and a harpoon. In the reflection of her steely blue eyes, I saw every crab salad I ever made. Every softshell sandwich, every cracked crab, crab cake, the Blueclaws and the Dungeness, the gallons of melted butter, it all came back to me in an overwhelming rush of memories. Surely, she implored, for all the crabs I have eaten, I could let this one go.

I was alone in a house with a nagging pre-teen. I held on as long as I could. But the parental mind can only take so much, then, like a crabshell, it cracks. Without another adult to help me hold onto reality, I lost it.

I reached for a tupperware container. Using a nearby sneaker I gave this very lucky crab something to hold onto while I lowered him in the container. He began to speak to me. He told me he was recently separated from his mate. She was special because it was his first female since Lois. Lois was a young lobster he loved. They tried to make a go of it. Their families objected because crabs walk sideways and lobsters walk straight and what of the offspring, they might walk diagonal... it was a moving moment.

I watched my girl put him in the basket of her bike and take off down the road to the boat launch to free him. I made some tea and sat down to collect myself after the ordeal. Then I heard the sound of a pickup truck in the driveway and shortly thereafter the sound of a man's boot's in the kitchen and the words, " Hey Sissy, where the hell's the crab ?"

Since then, I've gotten one letter from the crab. He's doing well. He has written a book about being the only crab to have ever escaped a kitchen. He has a new job as spokescrab for the new Adjustomatic Kelpbeds. Disney has purchased rights to his story and is planning a summer blockbuster movie. The titles being considered are ; Claw Wars, or maybe The Man Who Caught Liberty Crab, or my personal pick, Gone With the Tide.