The most beautiful crabs!
This is the closest I could find but I promise you they looked so much more amazing than even this!
This pic captures wading out into the water and fishing during the morning sunrise!
A lovely view of the bay from our condo.
Is that a weird title? I swear, these crabs were beautiful! This one is a playful, favorite-memories-from-childhood story.
I grew up in South Texas, and my grandfather had a fishing boat that he kept in Rockport where we’d vacation in the summers. Hands-down, my favorite memories on those vacations happened during the heralded fishing trip. The day of the trip, we’d wake up around 4am, head to the docks to buy live shrimp bait, make our way into the bay by 5am, and be fishing with the sunrise around 6am!
My grandpa’s original fishing boat was destroyed in a hurricane in 1982, (I’m gonna go ahead at let you do some math) when I was 8 years old. But that first boat he had was really cool. It had an upper deck with a ladder where he steered from, and a teency-tiny lower cabin where you could even sleep. On the morning of the fishing trip we’d load all the supplies and ourselves into the boat in the pitch black before dawn. My grandfather would slowly steer past the initial breakers with barely a wake, but then, THEN, he’d charge full throttle into the bay. Sometimes I got to sit in the upper deck while he drove, and he’d let me push the gear shift all the way forward as we picked up exhilarating speed like a bullet shot out of a gun! Hold onto your hats! (I lost a couple.)
My favorite fishing trip memory happened when I was around 12. It was mid-morning and we’d been fishing for awhile, and it was rather shallow water. I kept getting my hook stuck in the mud and I didn’t want to keep asking for help to free it. So I decided to climb of the boat and go exploring. The water was crystal clear and the terrain was sprinkled with patches of soft sand and grassy bushes. As I shuffled forward (you do this, to make sure you kick up any sting rays!), I started noticing critters darting away. It took me a few moments to catch a good glimpse of the sneaky dickens, but I had happened onto a tremendous crab population! In my memory they were so beautiful— blue and purplish legs with bright orange tips and highlighted with gold accents. Could that be what they really looked like? That’s how I remember them.
I called to my sister, who wanted to stay in the boat, to hand me the net. The adventure began! I started chasing the crafty crustaceans! I’d hand my sister the net with a crab, she’d empty it into our fish cooler, hand me back the net, and I’d head off again. I caught about 70 crabs that day. Please, before you call the EPA, know that I had no intention of killing these crabs, much less eating them. In my 12 year old brain I was having such a ball! My grandfather (much) later told me that what I did was illegal and we could have incurred a large fine. Apparently you were only allowed to catch a certain number, and only the males, and I definitely didn’t know the difference. Later that night, I was actually really disturbed that the adults all assumed the crabs would be a nice addition to our evening fish fry. When we returned to our condo, my mom handed me a tiny crab and told me he was too small to eat and I could take him back down to the water. As he floated, my heart sank :( What had I done? I held an impromptu, teary funeral.
Let me not turn this into a tragedy, though. This memory became a highlight because I was enthralled with a surprise discovery in nature. It felt like a delight-filled treasure hunt! I have always found particular joy in finding surprise critters. Like seeing an owl on your fence first thing in the morning when take you new puppy out to potty and then you remember this is a bird of prey, after all! Or a rare glimpse of a white squirrel (and I got his picture!) that leads to a mini research project and now you are reporting your sighting to the White Squirrel Institute. Or a hummingbird’s distinctive buzz AFTER you’ve given up trying to woo them and put the feeder away the day before. It just brings me such joy!
