somehow i have become the designated "adult" to take these boys on their adventures. they've figured out that they can talk aunt doris into pretty much anything. this trip the ditches were wetter than i've seen them since i was a kid, so we decided to go crawdadding. i think it may have even been my idea.
i told them they wouldn't get any in this first ditch they wanted to try. it was a cement lined one under an overpass. crawdads need to be able to dig into the mud to make their burrows don't ya know. all they found here were a few minnow . . .
and quite a bit of sludge.
we hit the mother lode here. troy yelled, "it's a crane! it's a crane! stop aunt doris! it's a crane!" cranes like crawdads more than anything it seems.
here's g pulling in the crawdad seine.
investigating their catch.
it's still amazing to me how many of these little guys were condensed in this one small ditch. florida is teeming with life after a good rainy spell.
g was a little hesitant at first till he got the hang of grabbing them.
avery, of course, was already an old pro . . .
he was especially enamored with the little ones and wanted me to get this pic.
and then there's troy who always likes to put on a show . . .
"come on big guys. go ahead and pinch me."
at the end of the haul troy told me, "they're only this big." and i told him, "and you're only this dirty."
bet you can guess who's hands those are.
aunt linda, the one who can do anything (see post below) boiled these up for g for breakfast on the last day.
this is one happy boy. he was so excited to capture and eat something straight off the land like that. i think it reminded him of the little house series. he kept asking me if laura ingalls wilder ate them.
thank you sweetie, i had never seen a crawdad before - dead or alive and had no idea where they come from. do they taste like shrimp? lobster? crab? chicken?
ReplyDeletethe little house books are magic. they line the imagination with possibilities. my daughter amy used to play "little house" all the time with her barbies. she would make me laugh because in her game the ingalls family had a nanny named jasmine and trust me the only nanny's on our farm are the goats.
thanks for the great pictures and crawdad tutorial. xxx
Loved this little insight into your adventure. I too had never heard of crawdads. We have a similar thing here in Australia, called yabbies. But they must be at least 3 or 4 times bigger than this (about the length of your hand) with claws that actually do a lot of damage! We used to go fishing for them as kids. Dangle a piece of string with raw meat tied at the end into a channel, then slowly bring it to the surface when the yabbies start nibbling, and catch it in a net. This story reminded me of a lot of fun times ;-)
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