Thursday, August 1, 2013

The Case of the Giant Star Fish



“How far do we have to walk?”  “About four miles,” I said  . . . . .”Are we half there yet?  “Slow down!”  “I gotta stop I got a stone in my shoe.”  “My stomach hurts.”  “Can you get me an I-Phone?  I need it for calling and texting.”  “Can we rest a minute?”  “Are we there yet?”  “Wait, I got a stone in my other shoe.”  “Do we have to go up this hill?”

The secret to turning a four-mile morning power walk into a four-mile wimpy walk is to wake up your 11 year old son early in the morning and take him walking with you.  And that’s not all, the walk turns from a costless morning exercise to an expensive breakfast in a nearby restaurant about half way through the walk.

The kids wanted to go crabbing again yesterday.  Adrian wanted to catch some big Dungeness crabs and have them for dinner.  We got our crabbing gear (twine and a net) we stopped by the grocery store and got some chicken wings for bait and off we went to catch us some crabs for dinner – or so we thought.  It’s great that Rebeca and Rob live only a couple of miles from Puget Sound and the Edmonds public beach and dock is only five miles north.

The water near the dock was very clear and we could see through at least 10 feet of water to the rocks below and the abundance of sea life near the shore; fish crabs, starfish, anemones, and I sure other things we could not see.  I reminded the kids that if they fell in the water to think about a very important fact – in the sea we are not on top of the food chain.

Isabella wanted to show us how crabs walked and proceeded to walk like a crab all over the dock.  All the people on the dock thought it was the cutest things – and it was walking sideways with her arms like the two front crab claws.



It turns out that there are certain State rules for crabbing and crabs cannot be taken at certain times of the week and Wednesdays was one of them.  Adrian wanted to set the lines anyway even if we had to throw them back. 

Raw chicken is like catnip for crabs, come to find out, star fish.  They can’t stay away from it and I’m sure it drives them wild.  We could not see any crabs where we decided to “fish” for them but I’m sure they were under the big rocks of the breakwater.  We could see some star fish and what seemed to be and octopus or a very large starfish with many points.  The refraction of the water on the waves distorted the view.  We tied the chicken wing to the twine and Adrian dropped it in the water.  The scent must have been pretty strong because the big orange blob that looked like a combination of an octopus and star fish with many points began to move toward it, and after a short time, “grabbed” it.   Adrian pulled it up and it was a starfish with at least 20 legs.  There was no way we were going to get the piece of chicken away, it would have died before it was going to let go.  Moral of the story:  If you think you taste like chicken, don’t go walking among star fish.

Here are some pictures and a video of it.



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