I was almost on time this morning as I herded Kizarvexilla out the door this morning for her ride to school. We climbed into the station wagon (lovingly dubbed “Moby”) and set out on our merry way. I had driven no more than 20 feet when I screeched to a halt. What I had thought was a small bird pecking in a puddle turned out to be something else entirely. A crawdad. A really BIG crawdad. Just scuttling through the parking lot, minding his own business.
“Okay, that’s weird,” I said, and pointed out our crustacious pedestrian to Kizarvexilla. “I wonder where it came from.”
We watched it for a moment, then I prophesied that the poor little critter would be roadkill within the hour, and we resumed along our path. Then I spotted a second one. And a third. And what looked to be a flattened fourth.
By the time we left the parking lot, we were both shaking our heads in wonderment. Kizarvexilla was quite excited, as the class she used to belong to at her daycare was called the Crawdads. “Wait until Miss Karen hears about this!”
Okay, I’ve only lived in Austin for a year, and it rained quite a lot last night. But is this normal? Or should I presume that these little guys were liberated by PETA during transport to our neighborhood H.E.B.?
That’s not a safe assumption these days; they could be terrorist crawdads. I’ve heard that the big ones pinch hard enough to clip off the valve stem of a tire with just one nip.
Texans call 'em crawdads or sometimes crawfish. For a taste delight, kill 'em, whack off their tails and fry 'em–the tail, that is. Tastes like shrimp.
I hear you, Swampy. I think only the fact that they’d been wandering around in the gasoline soaked parking lot prevented my father (born and raised in Louisiana) from driving over with a bag of rice and a cooking pot.
Actually, I do know. I’m a Northerner and will be all my life but I did live in TN for a while and they all called them crawdads. And Og knows I’ve read plenty of Southern literature! I was just teasing the OP.
