A Crawfish & its Creditors

Yesterday on our way to pick J up from school we found this little guy standing in the middle of the road threatening passing cars with the waving of his claws.

I revived my crawfish* catching skills of 20 years ago and put him in the only container I had in my car.  (He looks good in pink!)

*In East TX we call these critters crawfish, which, like some other E TX jargon, is apparently not actually a word.  But Crayfish just doesn't sound right. :)

I had J play Animal Guess on the way to the car instead of outright telling him what was waiting for him.  Took the boy 2 guesses!  Both boys were ecstatic about our new temporary pet.

On the way home we talked all about the little guy and I told them multiple times the crawfish will pinch if given the chance and that once it did, I could not remove it from anyone's finger and we'd just have to wait until it let go, which could be a very, very long time.  Then I reminded them about the time last summer that the crab pinched Daddy. ;)

J told me on the way home from school, "I know how to hold a crawfish without letting it pinch me.  You have to hold it in a very pacific way.  And I know that they use their claws to defend themselves from their creditors."

Apparently he does know how to hold one, as he picked this one up multiple times and there were no pinching incidents.

I gave the boys each a plastic drinking straw to use to touch the claws with "pacific" instructions to be very gentle with and respectful of our new pet as one of God's creatures.

They did great and the crawfish's nightmare was over a couple of hours or so later.
B (seeing J walking back from the creek):  Did you throw him in the water?
J:  No, I put him gently into the deep part of the creek.

To my great surprise, no one got pinched and the crawfish was released with nothing more than emotional damage, if that.  Fun times!