Mike and the Crayfish Running Across the Road

 

photocredit: otherwing photography
We were upstate during a major flooding incident and
all these crayfish were barreling across roads.

"Why did the crayfish cross the road?"

No freaking idea, by all accounts it seemed like a really dumbass idea. 

We were upstate for the annual familypalooza week in an AirB&B and of course we picked the week it rained apocalyptically. Between the storms, we walked up and down the country roads near our place. We observed flooded out roadways, swamped bridges and pretty much just lakes on either side of the streets. We made comments on the depth, salt content, and likely water recession timelines like we had at least a clue what we were talking about. Which we did not, of course.

We ran into this one woman, a volunteer firefighter who had been called to this ramshackle house up the street to pump out water in the basement that had risen higher than the first floor. She came out of the house and apparently saw a crayfish on the road, so she picked him up like his guardian angel, got in her jeep and drove down the street to where it ended in a flooded out section. She dropped the crawfish into the drink where I'm sure he went on to live a happy and fulfilled life. We were down there calculating if a nearby house, which was for sale for maybe obvious reasons, was entirely flooded or just only half flooded. Anyway, we watched the woman do this.

Then we walked back up the street and saw the 5-9 crawfish the woman squashed with her Jeep on her way to rescue the one crawfish.

On the way back, we ran into a neighbor named Mike. Mike told us he had moved back into the house he grew up in. He said the snow in the winters back in his childhood used to pile up higher than the stop sign out front the yard. He said the floodwaters would recede and the roads would be mostly passable by the next day (which was as unbelievable as it was true). 

Mike said he was right now fixing up his RV so he and the missus could ride down to Florida. He had plans to hunt burmese pythons down there, he'd already bought the spike you shove through their heads to kill them humanely. Turns out reptile heads can live quite awhile without a body. He was going to sell python skins for $100, but properly dispose of the meat because it was full of arsenic so you can't sell it or eat it or leave it anywhere.

If the crawfish weren't the highlight of my day, it would have been this conversation with Mike.