The Crab King

                                                 
When I was a boy, I lived with my family in an old farmhouse down in a valley in the middle of nowhere. It was a magik heavy valley, full of strange and wonderful people and places. Us boys never lacked for puddles to jump in, trees to climb or trouble to find.



Just a few feet from our house was a small creek that dominated my early memories. In summer, it never quite dried up and during the heaviest rains was never enough to knock you off your feet. All in all, it was a perfect place for a small kid to play. We would create little pools by building dams with rocks and mud, then chase minnows and crawdads with equal parts enthusiasm and fear. I can still feel the warm sun on my back and see my brothers splashing the clear water as they ran thru the pools, little sparkling drops hanging in the air like diamonds.



Now, with any group of boys, you will need to create space. I was the third of four boys and survived the bullying of two older brothers by being funny and learning to wander away from them. It was on one of those West Virginia walk-abouts, that I first saw the Crab King. I was playing in the creek and was rather proud of myself for having picked up a crawdad of prodigious size (perhaps a shade over an inch), when I saw a hole about two inches round in the lee of a little waterfall.



Being raised in mortal fear of snakes, I assumed it was the mother of all snakes holes and was just about to run screaming to the house, when I saw something stir in the shadows, just inside the hole. Transfixed, I watched a brown-orange claw extend out into the sunlight. A huge, massive terrifying claw which was as large as any whole crawdad I had ever picked up. Slowly the eyestalks extended out, preceding a massive body of lobster size which had a yellow halo around his head. I must have flinched at the sight because this humongous crab darted back into its den and sent me running to the house inside a high-pitched shriek of terror that only a pre-pubescent boy can make.



I tried to tell mom what I had seen, but she was one poor mom with four boys stuck out in the middle on nowhere with our nearest neighbor more than rifle distance away. Since she was one of ten and grew up even more isolated, I gotta think a little crawdad scare barely registered. So I took the prudent course and avoided that part of the creek from then on, until the flood.



Part of the charm of valley living is the inevitable flooding and the flotsam it brings. Our little homestead was just high enough to avoid the normal spring floods, but the really big ones would get up under the house, which happened twice in my memory. This time, the flood brought a most unwelcome guest. No, not the Crab King, but his mortal enemy the Rat Lord.



Rats are awful. They are dirty and vile, given to rude speech and poor hygiene. I recommend avoiding them if at all possible. Even though they will eat just about anything, they have a passion for crab meat. As you can imagine, this tends to upset the crabs, and in particular, the Crab King.



The flood brought a bedraggled rat crew up under our house, which pleased the Crab King not one bit. Before the flood waters had receeded, he was up under our house and taking on the Rat Lord himself in mortal combat. Now I never saw the actual fight, and the Crab King was too modest to give much detail, but it was an epic struggle. The Rat fought with tooth and claw, the Crab defended with shell and his massive pinchers. As I understand it, the fight lasted well into the night and cost the Crab King a claw and some of his carapace, but eventually he prevailed. The rats were driven off and the crawdads were safe for another summer.