The dreaded Dead Man's Fingers strike again!

Dead Man's Fingers!  Those sound like something from our worst nightmare!  Dead Man's Fingers..ahh..yes!  Those creepy, grey and shriveled digits that come crawling after us as we, for some reason, have become paralyzed with fear and cannot run!  Those fingers that are no longer attached to any hand or body but still have a life of their own and those same ones that have ill intent in our dreams.  Zombie fingers! No?  Well, perhaps these are just some prop from an old Abbott and Costello movie.  Some Egyptian mummy's fingers are chasing Bud and Lou around a haunted museum! Bud and Lou must defeat the fingers before solving the mystery of the missing jewels of some pharaoh!  Dead Man's Fingers!  I do believe many a story could be written with that as a title!

Dead Man's Fingers or gills of a crab can be clearly seen once the carapace or shell is removed.

Actually, the Dead Man's Fingers were found in my kitchen this morning and I do not live in some haunted museum!  Nor did these fingers chase me or scare me in the least!  Dead Man's Fingers are organs found in Blue Crabs.  To be a bit more precise, these "fingers" are the gills of the crab.  They are elongated, spongy-looking organs that enable the crab to filter air from the water.  Their name comes from the shape and appearance.   Being slightly grey, shriveled and long, they actually do resemble the fingers of a dead human...if you have a great imagination!  As a matter of coincidence, there are five on each side of the crab!  The Dead Man's Fingers are located right below the carapace or hard upper shell of the crab.  Once that is removed, these gills are the most prominent feature of the body of the crab. They sit there in all their glory just waiting to scare the bejeebies out of some poor soul!  Not really..most folks who eat crabs are fully aware of what they will see once that shell is removed!  Although, some folks do believe that these organs are poisonous and will kill you if you eat them.  This is erroneous and probably just derived from the said appearance of the gills.  Although, I have not tasted them (they look yucky to me!), others have and say they taste as yucky as they look!   Perhaps that to has lent some bearing on the myth that they are toxic.  These are part of the crab that one discards when picking or eating!

Blue Crabs with their..ummm..blue and green hues.

Just to throw another interesting fact about crabs at you..since I have been bombarding you with excessive crab lore..Blue Crabs do turn red when cooked!  Most know this but some do not realize why!  It has to do with pigments in the crabs shells.  The red pigment is wrapped in proteins which give it the dark coloring.  When heated the protein "unravels" ( for lack of a better term) and the red color that is underneath becomes visible.  Heat destroys the darker bluish or greenish pigments leaving behind the bright red!  Although this change is definitely related to heat, it is not a test for "doneness"!  Crabs and all seafood should be thoroughly cooked!  That brings me to another point!  Most folks do overcook their seafood!  With Blue Crabs "doneness" has nothing to do with safety!  That safety all comes with cooking live crabs!  Never use dead crabs as bacteria forms rather quickly on seafood and I am sorry to tell you, that is what makes people sick!  Live Blue Crabs can be plopped in boiling water, the water returned to a full rolling boil and cooked within six to ten minutes depending on the size of the crab!  Each of those shells sort of turns into a mini pressure cooker and will fully cook an average size crab in just minutes.  The importance of having that crab live and the water in a full boil cannot be stressed enough but time wise ten minutes is usually enough!

The same Blue Crabs boiled and showing their "redness"!

Ok..so now I have ventured far from the original theme of this post!  To summarize..Dead Man's Fingers are not movie props or zombies..are not poisonous..and taste lousy! Dead Man's Fingers are not fingers at all but are gills. Crabs change colors due to heat demolishing certain proteins.  Never use a dead crab..it will make you ill.  Always keep the water boiling but never overcook your crab!  Also, never miss a chance to view an Abbott and Costello movie..that is pure entertainment!

The Washington Monument or the Capitol Dome? That is the question of the day!

The Bay is full of the fattest Blue Crabs this summer!  Early this morning, I headed to the pier to check the crab pots and found that there were thirty-eight of the nicest crabs!  These were all dumped in a bucket and hauled to the house to be boiled!  All except the females, that is!  These were either put back in the crab traps or released,  Most folks would say that I am a tad loco for this action as they relish the eggs that are found inside the female crab this time of year.  I have no taste for those but I do love these crabs!  I use them as "bait" for the others!  I suppose that gives a new meaning to the term "jailbait"!  I have found that as long as I leave a lone female in each pot, the males come flocking!  The male Blue Crab is generally much larger than the female thus supplying me with more meat!  Besides..I want that female to lay her eggs around the Bayou so I will be assured of a healthy crop of crabs again next summer!

The apron of a Blue Crab that is shaped like the Washington Monument indicates a male crab.

This brings me to the question that I get asked by a lot of the visitors to the Bayou.  "How do you tell the difference between the male and female Blue Crab?  How do you know which to toss over?"  Anyone who lives near the coastlines can easily spot the difference but folks who are never around the crabbing process might have a problem.  The difference is in what is called the "apron" of the crab.  To find this, the crab must be flipped upside-down.  There on the underside, is a flap which is the apron.  The shape of this flap is what determines the sex of the crab.  If the apron is pointed, the crab is a male..if it is rounded, it is a female.  Older females have a looser and darker apron while those that are immature have a tight, almost white apron.  This apron is where the mature female will develop a "sponge" that will hold the eggs as they grow into tiny crabs.  The sponge takes up to several hours to develop and can hold up to several million eggs at one time!  One strange fact about female Blue Crabs..they only mate one time in their life but can reproduce several times after that!

If the apron resembles the Capitol Dome, it is on a female Blue Crab.  This dark colored apron indicates that this is a mature female that is capable of reproducing.

Back when I was young, I used to go crabbing with my cousin, Margie.  We would sit for hours on the end of their pier with a string, a dead catfish and a long-handled scoop net.  That is all the "equipment" that is needed for hours of entertainment and all that is needed to catch a bucket of fat crabs! The catfish would be tied to one end of the string and tossed over into the water.  The catfish was allowed to lay on the bottom where the crabs were located. The other end of the string was tied to a pier post.  The string would be watched and once it was being tugged on by a crab, it was gently pulled to the pier.  As the crab came into view, it was scooped with the long-handled net!  It took a good bit of practice by the "puller" to get that crab up within reach of the "scooper" but it was well worth the effort.  After a morning of catching the crabs, my Aunt Marie would boil the critters.  Later in the afternoon, we would all sit around the kitchen table and pick out the crab meat.  It was here that I learned the fine art of picking crabs.  To this day, I still use the same process that I was taught at that early age.  I do remember that it was there that I learned how to distinguish the difference in the crabs but I am not sure just where I heard a simple comparison that made remembering it easy. (It could have very well been either my Uncle Alfred or my Aunt Marie that taught me this bit of information!) The male crabs have the "Washington Monument on their undersides while the female has the Capitol Dome!"  What an analogy of the sexes of the Blue Crab!  I can clearly see the resemblance but would have never thought to make the comparison to national landmarks!  Geez!  Whatever works, I guess!

A Time for Everything

There is a time and place for everything..sometimes it is just hard to distinguish just when and where that is. On the Bayou today, it was a time to quit. When I was on the pier this afternoon, it became quite apparent that crabbing season was finished. This made me sad as I have not gotten many of the blue crabs for our freezer this year. The season came and went without me ever getting even one nice bucketful. The season ending actually has nothing to do with the lack of crabs...they are still there swimming around under the pier. I almost felt as if I heard them snickering at me as I pulled up the traps. They knew they had won this season! They were the victors! The whole reason that the crabbing season has ended is OTTERS! Those cute, little, playful critters that I love so much! Well, they have not been playing nicely this summer! They were quite the menace to my crab traps!

There are at any given time, six crab traps tied to the pier posts during the summer months. These crab "pots" as they are called stay tied there catching crabs all season unlike the sweet, little nets that some folks use. I go for the "big daddies" of the traps! I want crabs..not "a" crab! These traps are made of heavy gauge wire and are baited with "scrap" fish or the yucky stuff leftover after cleaning edible fish. All of the nasty parts are stuffed in the bait box of the trap (nothing goes to waste here on the Bayou!). The trap is then tossed back into the water in hopes that some hungry crabs will amble in to dine.

This summer, however, my pots were raided on a nightly basis. At first, I was blaming the huge snapping turtles. I did this since several times I found them resting on top of my traps!...and...I did catch one ugly fellow inside munching on a crab! But then...the alligators were always hanging around the pier and they would not hesitate to make a meal out of any discarded fish. They are opportunists that will steal just as soon as hunt. My traps were like "sitting ducks" out there with no one to guard them! Then one morning..I spied the culprit and that culprit was not one but several! A family of otters were helping themselves to my crab bait and make shambles of the traps!

The crab pots have seen better days. There is no way a crab would be caught in a trap that has huge holes ripped in the sides! They could just walk in one side and right on out the other! The otters must be tremendously strong as they merely shredded the heavy gauge wire in their efforts to free the crabs....er....get my bait!

I sadly pulled the crab pots out of the water. Son will haul them back to the yard so we can discard of them safely. Too many (not-so-smart) crabbers will just cut the ropes and leave the traps in the water. This causes so many problems as fish, crabs, turtles, diving birds and yes, even the otters could become trapped inside and die. Our traps will be dismantled so no land animals can become snared in them, either. Hopefully,before next summer, some new crab pots will find their way to the Little Bayou House. In the meantime, what little crab meat that I have in the freezer will be saved for special occasions....and the crabs in the Bay shall snicker all they want!

There is a Thief Among Us!

Being as it is summer, it should be prime time for the Blue Crabs to be in the Bay. It should be the right time for my traps to be cluttered with the crustaceans. It should be the season that I am busy picking these crabs and filling my freezers with their fine meat. It should be...I have plenty of traps for the job but I also have a couple of problems with the catching part. One..it is extremely hard to catch the bait for the traps. There are so many menhaden and mullet in the Bay that most of the larger fish are just not biting. Being as I usually use fish as bait for the crabs..this presents a problem. I was told that there are so many minnows in the Bay that "if a fish even yawns, he has his belly full"! That just about sums it up! This problem could be overcome, though, as I could resort to using some other bait. I could always dig in the freezer and find some unidentifiable meat and use that as crabs are not picky eaters. They have no pride and obviously no taste buds! Crabs will eat most anything that fits into two categories..what they can catch and whatever is dead. The other problem..some critter is stealing what bait I have! I fish most every day and occasionally catch a catfish to put in the traps. On the basic crab trap, there is a "bait box" that is just that..a box for the bait. It is just large enough to poke a catfish in head first and has a hinged door that will spring closed. This is supposed to hold the bait in the trap..key word here "supposed". The trap is then dropped into the water with the bait trap door on the bottom..so the trap actually sits on top of the door..also helping keep the bait well secured.

I have no idea just what is raiding the traps. Some critter comes in the night and steals every bait. No bait..no crabs! Another disheartening thing..this same critter obviously is not happy with just stealing the fish..it messes up the entire trap! On each side of the trap, there is a door that is just big enough for a crab to crawl through. The crab..being not so bright..then cannot figure out how to go back out the door to escape. Each night, whatever critter is the thief helps the crabs escape! When I check the traps in the morning, the crawlers (as the points of entry are called in crabbers' lingo!) are all wallowed out. Instead of being flattened like the shape of a crab, they are now round and huge. It does not take the smartest of crabs to figure out how to go out a hole that is as large as the side of a barn! At first, I was blaming the playful otters as the culprits! I thought sure, these agile animals were swimming down, flipping the trap upside down, opening the bait box door and stealing my bait! Then, I started thinking.."Why in the world would the otter decide to ream out the crawler if it knew how to open the bait box door?" What would be the point of going inside the trap, if the otter knew how to open the door? Then I pondered the idea of it being the Snapping Turtles! Now these guys would definitely be strong enough to do some damage to the traps! They may not be smart like the otters and actually think they need to go inside the trap to get the bait. Perhaps the turtles just wanted to eat the crabs that were in the trap. A turtle would definitely stretch out the crawlers so they were large enough holes for the crabs to escape. After pondering this idea for a while, another thought occurred to me..gars! A gar, seeing a trapped crab, might think a free meal was for the taking! It could poke its long nose into the crawler and "grab a crab"! This would not account for the fish being taken from the bait box, though. Maybe the alligator has taken a liking to my traps! Their jaws would definitely do some major damage to the trap! Gators like both crabs and fish as a meal and this would account for the nocturnal activity!

Since this has been happening too often for my satisfaction, I decided that something needed to be done. I felt sure that if I could only keep the bait safe, the crabs would stay close..a free meal is just too enticing! Wiring the door to the bait box would be a logical answer. I found a small role of wire and proceeded to do just that. All four sides of the door was tightly wired closed. I knew that I could not do anything about the crawlers being stretched wide so I would just have to hope for the best. The traps have been set now for several nights but only a few crabs have been caught. This season is beginning to look a mite bleak as far as crabmeat is concerned!