She’s So Crabby

“Chewie,” said her boyfriend Kung-Fu. “Haven’t you had enough yet?”

distortion, his girlfriend, HoBiscuit, and I perked up our ears to listen in on the conversation between our friends as we all sat on the docks. It was midnight on Saturday and we’re all there trying to catch some fish, even though we knew there was a better chance of peace spontaneously breaking out in the Middle East than there was of us catching anything other than the West Nile virus. And believe me, there were maybe a bazillion mosquitoes out there and they all wanted a piece of the GeekMan to take home to the kids.

I honestly believe I ‘donated’ a pint of blood to those little bastards.

Anyway, while we were all used to fishing using poles and hooks and worms and stuff, Kung-Fu had decided to try a different sort of ‘fishing’. When we were getting ready to leave for the docks, he had insisted that in addition to the other fishing stuff, we also bring along a big ball of twine and a package of very cheap, frozen chicken legs. “Gonna catch me a crab.” was all he would say when asked what the twine and chicken were for. Sometimes he would even wink and add, “Crabs just love chicken. That’s what ‘they’ say and I believe them.”

‘They’ being the international knowledge society of all things crab related, of course.

When we arrived at the docks, Kung-Fu took out one of the now thawed chicken legs, securely tied some twine around it and then dumped it over the side of the docks. When asked how this would capture a wily and devious crab, he would only say, “Crabs are stupid. They love chicken and when I start pulling them up, they’ll just hold on and keep right on eating. You’ll see, they’ll hold on all the way to the top and before they know it they’ll be covered in butter and breadcrumbs. Just you wait and see.”

Three hours later, we were still waiting to see.

However, in the interim it was Chewie, and not Kung-Fu, who had become obsessed with capturing one of the little bottom dwelling devils. While Kung-Fu had been content to simply dump his leg over the side and haul it up once every 30 minutes, Chewie had been ‘casting’ hers and retrieving it consistently every five minutes, to the second, since we arrived. And unlike her boyfriends’ completely whole and noticeably uneaten chicken leg, Chewie’s leg was being attacked as if it were the last potato latke at an all-you-can-eat Ethiopian Bar Mitzvah.

And the look of tortured anger on Chewie’s face was beginning to frighten us.

“No Kung-Fu, I have NOT had enough! The little bastard is down there eating my leg and I’m not leaving until I catch him and torture him like he’s been torturing me! I’m going to pull off his little antennae, break his claws, rip out his legs one by one and then poke his eyestalks with a burning match! He will rue the day he messed with Chewie. Oh yes, he will rue the day!”

Like I said, frightening.

Two hours later, at two in the morning, everyone had had enough of fishing for the night. Even Chewie was willing to concede defeat and, with a somber salute to her victorious but unseen enemy, she cut her mangled piece of chicken free of the twine and let it drop into the water below.

“Eat up, you little Frick. I hope you choke on a bone and none of your little crabby friends knows the Heimlich.”

Seeing how distraught she was over the fact that a creature with the brain the size of a grain of sand had been able to outwit a woman who was only a year away from earning her law degree, Kung-Fu put his arm around Chewie and gave her a big hug.

“Don’t be sad Chewie. My chicken leg is still in the water over there, so why don’t you pull it up while we pack up the rest of this stuff? Who knows, you might actually catch him and then you won’t be so pissed off.”

He wisely did not add, “And when you’re pissed, I don’t get lucky.”

Accepting Kung-Fu’s pity-chicken with grace, Chewie began to stealthily pull up the last remaining chicken leg from the watery depths below. And while we were all packing our stuff up and lamenting the fact that we had all failed to catch even a single fish, Chewie was slowly but surely reeling in what was to be the one and only story of success for the entire 4 hours we spent on that dock.

That’s right. Chewie finally got crabs.