Crawdad Hunt
25 November 2006 | Tahoma, CA
Kathy
It's the day after Thanksgiving and we all need some exercise. Casey suggests going to a movie (this is exercise to Casey) and Tara wants to go ice skating. We settle for walking down to the lake to catch crawdads from the dock. The streets are still snowy and icy and the air is frigid. We grab a green plastic sand bucket (and its little yellow shovel), a bundle of string, and some left-over honey glazed ham and head down to the dock. Sean reluctantly comes along (it's cold outside and he could be watching something on TV that has the word "Star� in the title; -Wars, -Trek, etc.).
I tie a piece of ham to a string and hand it to Casey, who decides she needs a rock to use as a sinker. My hands are freezing as I try to tie the string around a round rock, which keeps falling off. Casey experiments with different shaped rocks, none of which stay on her line very long. I hand Tara the string and ham and then rig my own line (I use 3 big chunks of ham so I won't need a rock to sink the bait). Sean observes (thinking about how warm the cabin is and regretting his decision to come with us).
The crawdads smell the ham in the water and start crawling out from under the rocks. The lake is so clear, I can see a crawdad coming toward my bait and then grabbing on to it with its claws. I pull my line up, but the crawdad falls off right before I get it onto the dock. Confident now, I yell, "One dollar to the person who catches the first one!�
Hearing the challenge, Sean looks interested and decides to rig his own line. The one-dollar challenge sends Casey into a panic to catch the first one. "Mom, tie this rock on my line (it looks the same as the 5 other rocks that already fell off her line).� "Go ask your dad to help you and quit yelling, you"ll scare the crawdads away,� I say as I try to maneuver my ham closer to a crawdad. I hear Casey yelling at Sean to help her and as I turn around, I see Sean with several strings, chunks of ham, and some rocks in his hands and a green bucket falling into the water behind him. I know this is a cheap ploy to distract me from catching the first crawdad, but Sean yells that it was an accident.
The dock is about 5 feet higher than the water, but Sean seems to think he can lie on the dock and stretch far enough to reach the now floating bucket. After throwing a few things at the bucket (ham, snow and then a large pine cone) to make it move closer to the dock, it moves further and further away.
Tara and I tied for catching the first crawdad (we each pulled one up at the same time) and then Casey caught one. Sean came home with a lonely little yellow shovel.