What??????

  With all of the rain of recent days, strange things have been happening on the Bayou.  One in particular sticks out sort of like that proverbial sore thumb.  The other morning saw me up with the birds.  I was having to get outside chores accomplished in between the rainstorms and it seemed that right at daybreak, the weather was clear.  As I stepped outside the front door, I immediately knew something was amiss.  Right there on the board path was a crab.  This was not some small fiddler crab that wandered up from the marsh but rather a nice sized blue crab.  It is not likely that this fellow wandered all the way up the hillside just to pay me a visit!

  As I poked at the poor (dead) crab, I pondered just how in the world that thing wound up practically on my doorstep.  Had some critter thought to share its supper with me?  Perhaps the heron that I nursed back to health decided to repay me.  Maybe a large predator such as a coyote or fox caught the poor, hapless crab and then dropped it when Ms. Ez, the Bayou Dog started barking furiously at it.  On the other hand, a large predatory bird such as a hawk could have snatched up the crab and flew over the house.  Maybe the crab reached up and clamped down on the bird's leg causing it to drop its catch.  That catch (the crab) just happened to fall right in the Rose Garden with the impact killing it.  So sad.  Whatever, I now had to deal with a dead crab.

  I still must say that finding a usually water-based crab inside the confines of the garden fence was a bit confusing.  Well, I figured that it deserved to be returned to the Bay so I toted it to the pier and gave it a proper "burial at sea", also known as, chunking it into the water.  Goodbye crab!