They are cousins to lobsters although few grow larger than seven inches. They have gills, but they can survive for quite some time on dry land. They crawl around feebly when out of the water but are actually quite nimble swimmers. Most people who know of them have met them as food. Some use them to catch fish and far fewer may have them as aquarium pets. I knew them as fellow travelers through the ditches I wandered through as a child. I was shocked the first time I heard that people ate them. Eat a crawdad. Unthinkable.
They were as common to me as any other bug and in fact at some times of the year much more plentiful. With a nearly constant supply of water in them, our ditches held legions of crawdads. They were excellent free range pets and I spent hours entertaining myself with them.
One of my favorite past times was catching crawdads. Now this you could do free handed in the ditch itself if you were fast enough or if you could corner one. It was much easier to catch the little guys this way, but the larger crawdads were more evasive. For the large mudbugs we used a technique quite similar to catching crabs. A lure tied to a piece of string.
Here is how you catch a crawdad:
1. First you must become bored with just about everything else or it must be many weeks since the last fishing trip so that you are eager to catch anything.
2. You must open the refrigerator door and then call out "Mom, can I have some bacon?" She will know exactly what you want the bacon for so you never have to explain why. Usually she will say yes unless you have asked right before an event where she wants you clean.
3. Get the bacon out of the refrigerator and take one slice of raw bacon out of the pack. Cut the bacon slice into three pieces. Tie a length of kite string around the center of each bacon piece. You know to tie it tightly and always tie it with an uneven number of knots like your grandfather taught you. He said even knots would always fail and you had to always use more than one knot. Just to be sure you tie it with five knots.
4. Go outside and survey the landscape. You are looking for muddy towers that rise above the ditch banks like black chimneys. You don't just want the tallest tower, you want the one that has the largest hole. You have quite a few to select from. Stake your claim quickly because once your cousins see what you are up to you will want to have already picked out the best one.
5. Sit down next to the crawdad chimney being sure you don't let you shadow fall across it. Now you must use your ESP. You must link to the crawdad mind to find out which way he is facing and sit so that his back will be to you.
6. Take out your bacon lure and slowly lower it down the hole. When the string goes slack you know you have reached the bottom.
7. Wait.
8. Get tired of waiting and cautiously put tension on the line. If it lifts easily you have not waited long enough. If it feels heavy you are ready.
9. Slowly begin to pull the line up. Here is where an amateur will fail. Go to fast and he will let go. You are no amateur and the line comes up heavy, slow and smoothly.
10. You will see the bacon first and this is where you find out if your ESP worked. As you slowly pull a little more his claws will come into view. If you linked minds and his back is to you then all is well. If you failed your crawdad mind meld then he will be facing you and you must act quickly.
11. The crawdad will be hanging on to the bacon with its claws and you must grab it on its back right at the level where the pincers join the body. If you grab too high he will pinch you. If you grab too low he will pinch you.
12. Make your move.
13. Since you are an expert at this you are now holding a crawdad. Since your cousins saw what you are doing they are now crawdad fishing as well. This is why you tied up three lines. You have given one extra line to your two youngest cousins and one line to your oldest cousin. Your youngest cousins are rank amateurs and seldom put all the steps together to catch one. Your oldest cousin Bobby is your competition. You must catch the biggest crawdad. If you chose the best tower you have succeeded. You usually triumph because he still thinks that the tallest towers have the biggest crawdads. You know it is the ones with the widest holes. You keep this tidbit of knowledge to yourself. Winning is everything.
14. Get bored and hot and drop the crawdad tail first back into its hole. Hang out with your cousin Bobby and wade through the ditches to see what you can find.
The mud tower lure game was only one of many interactions we had with crawdads and we considered it shooting fish in a barrel. Fun if you were super bored, fun if you were a rank amateur, but as an expert you wanted the thrill of the chase. Open ditch crawdad wrangling. This could only be done if the water had settled down after a rain. It was at its best when there had been several weeks without rain and the deep water was concentrated only in a few places. If you spied a large crawdad in the open you had to approach it so that your shadow would not fall on it. Crawdads might be dumb but they had good survival instincts. If you could get close enough you could sneak your hand into the water and grab it behind its back.
Bobby and I were always concerned about the health and welfare of our wild crawdads. We watched over their growth and would transport any that had been caught in a drying puddle into deeper water. We were like nervous parents when they molted their shells because this left them soft shelled and vulnerable. We would sometimes give little bacon pieces to those who had lost a claw.
One day we were in the ditch nearest my cousins house and we came across a large but obviously ill crawdad. Being experts we knew it was not behaving in a normal manner. We brought it out of the water for examination. It was barely moving. After a thorough going over I gave a prompt diagnosis. He was in serious danger. He had heart trouble. Our crawdad needed CPR. Both of us watched a whole lot of TV shows and knew just what to do.
The field next to this ditch was a horse pasture that did not have a normal wooden fence surrounding it. This pasture had an electric fence. There was just a single strand of wire that ran at about chest level to us that surrounded not just this one acre, but also a couple more acres behind my cousin's house. Now it may not sound like enough fence to keep a horse inside, but it was plenty. When it was first installed my cousin and I had made up elaborate games, all of which culminated in having to touch the electric fence. It packed quite a wallop, much like a wasp sting. We learned through trial and error and the innocent trust of the youngest cousins that if we were holding hands and one person touched the electric fence, everyone felt it.
I marshaled Bobby into action. "We don't have much time," I said, "He is about to go."
"What do we do?" Bobby cried.
"We have to shock him, " I said knowingly.
We both looked at the fence. "I will do it," I said bravely and I went over to the fence. "You hold him in your hand and when I touch the fence you touch him to my finger."
We got into position.
You can if you listen hear the hum that comes from an active electric fence. The slight whum was evident as we took our places. Bobby held the crawdad in his cupped hands and I pointed the index finger of my left hand at the crawdad and hovered my right index finger over the fence. "Ready?" I asked, "We go on three. One. Two. Three." On three I touch the fence but Bobby flinched his cupped hands away without touching my outstretched finger. "What are you doing?" I shouted, mad that I got shocked for nothing, "We don't have much time." He came over again and we set up once more. "One. Two. Three." This time Bobby didn't flinch but when my finger made contact with the crawdad in his hands he screamed and dropped the crawdad.
"Oh no," I said, and swooped down to pick up our patient. The crawdad was worse for wear, in fact it was not moving at all now. Bobby sprang into action, driven by his guilt from dropping his charge. He took the crawdad in one hand and didn't just touch the fence, he grabbed it. Now the jolt from an electric fence is not one that would actually kill you, but it is enough to cause your muscles to contract. When Bobby grabbed the wire his hand clenched down and he wasn't able to let go. I pulled his hand free.
We examined our patient. Unfortunately all our valiant efforts were in vain. He had passed on. We buried him beside the ditch. Bobby was a little misty eyed. I patted him on the back. "It's okay," I said, "We did everything we could."
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