Oyster Worms..Just Another Reason

  I will admit it.  Even though I eat a lot of seafood and live on a bayou, I am not a fan of oysters.  Strange, huh??  If I do eat a few, they have to be very tiny and fried really crispy.  That, in itself, is a problem since I do not like fried foods.  Occasionally, having something fried is ok but a steady diet of it is terrible!  Oysters are one of those things that I can happily do without from the get-go.  

  Mark brought home six huge sacks of oysters so Son tossed two sacks (at a time) in the wheelbarrow and wheeled them down the hill.  I have a strict rule that oysters are to be shucked far from the house.  The mounds of empty shells can emit a stench that infiltrates the house if the wind is right.  So, down the hill went the oysters and Mark set to work shucking them.  Since this is a time-consuming chore for one person, he opted to open two sacks and take a break.  When he restarted, there was a drizzly rain going so Son and I erected a makeshift tent allowing the shucking to be done in a little more comfort.  It took quite a while to shuck six sacks.  My job was to keep Mark supplied with lots of hot coffee on this cold, drizzly, oyster-shucking day.

  Once the shucking was complete, it was up to Son to haul the empty shells to the marsh edge.  There, the coons, rats and any other critter can feast on the leftovers and I will not complain of the stench.  While he was washing the wheelbarrows, he called to me.  "Hey, Mom.  Come see."  My young man of few words evidently had made some odd discovery.  He knows that I have an insatiable curiosity about any unusual critter.  I headed to him with camera in hand.  I knew something interesting had been found and I was not disappointed.  Disgusted but not disappointed.  Son pointed to the bottom of the wheelbarrow.  There were dozens of the weirdest looking critters crawling around in wonderment of their new surroundings.  "Are those a type of leach?  Or worm?" he pondered.  I had no answer but took a lot of photos so I could research the critters. Some of the critters were maybe an inch long but others were nigh on four inches in length!  Weird!

  Yep.  They are worms.  Mud worms, to be exact.  Polydora websteri.  Oyster worms.  These are marine worms that make their homes inside of oyster shells of live oysters.  There, they have a symbiotic relationship with the oyster and, other than leaving a "muddy" blemish on the inside of the shell, they are supposedly harmless. Also, they supposedly do not make the oyster inedible so if you are served raw oysters and find a squirmy worm, you are fully welcome to eat the oysters.   According to all I have read, they leave the oyster shortly after it has been removed from the water,  so some folks use this as a guide to the freshness of the oysters they purchase.  No worms mean old oysters.  Hmmm?  To be truthful, finding the worms just gave me one more reason not to eat the oysters.  Stench, worms and the idea that the oyster looks a lot like something the cat may have coughed up all add up to me preferring shrimp. How can anyone eat these things raw???  Nope...NOPE!  Especially with live worms crawling around on them!  Ugly worms.  Creepy worms.  NOPE!  Ain't happenin', folks, ain't happenin'.

Oh, How Fortunate!

  I always figured that the Bayou could be seen as my little piece of paradise.  The Little Bayou House is nestled back from the main road and the lane twists and turns as it meanders through the woods.  Our place is sort of isolated since the Bayou is on the east, the Back Bay is on the south, the woods is on the north and my brother's place is to our west.  People visitors are far and few between.  Critter visitors, however, abound.  Some, we like.  Others...well, we could do without.

  This morning as I was wandering about the hillside, I noticed a critter high up under the eaves of the shed.  This shed sits near the canebrake so it does not surprise me that a myriad of critters are in the area. This one was one of those "could do without" ones.  A huge cockroach was settled in for the daytime hours up near the roof edge.  Being nocturnal, the roach was ready for a day's sleep before becoming active again.  This was a Smokeybrown Cockroach so it was rather large. Not one that I want anywhere near the house!  

  I got to thinking about roaches and did a bit of research.  There are nearly 3000 species of roaches in the world!  That is enough to give just about anyone a good case of the willies!  Thankfully, we can pare that number down to 50 species living in the United States.  Still, that is far too many for me!  Then, I read how fortunate we are down here in the Deep South!  We only have 4 species of the nasties in our area!!  Somehow, that still did not make me feel joyous.  Having any roaches at all is not to my liking.

  The Smokeybrown Cockroach is one that prefers to live in wooded areas.  Key word here is "prefers".  They will move indoors given the opportunity so it is best to keep up with any roach eradication methods that are in effect.  With the size of this critter, I am thinking perhaps we should double or maybe triple our efforts!

The Cellar!

  I was out raking some more of the oak leaves that keep falling like rain upon our yard.  This seems to be a never-ending chore but I do believe I might finally be making headway.  Son was crawling around under the Little Bayou House with a sprayer.  It was that fine time of year again where we have to exterminate creepy-crawly things that insist on inhabiting the underparts of the house. Termites, fleas, spiders, roaches...anything that ventures underneath the floor will meet its death and I have no qualms about that.  Those types of critters are not on my "like" list.  

  Michael was only under the house for a short while when I heard..."Uh, Mom?"  Ok, so that usually is not something I wish to hear coming from him.  That usually means that he has discovered a problem.  I stuck my head under the house just in time to see him wiggle his way toward me. "Can you get me a flashlight.....and maybe your camera?"  Ok, I really did not like where this was going!  When I questioned him about his need for the camera, he just looked at me and grinned.  "I did not know we had a cellar."   What a find!  After all of these many, many years in the Little Bayou House, I just now discovered that we have a root cellar! 

  I rushed to get his light and my camera.  I was a bit excited to find that he had uncovered something so interesting.  Why!  What must be hidden in a long-lost cellar!  Perhaps treasures! Yes, indeed! Directly beneath the kitchen sits the newly unearthed vault.  Why have I not know about this before today?  Why did we not discover our unique "basement" earlier?  These, my friends, are questions that took a while to answer.

  Light and camera in hand, he squirmed his way back under the house. "Strange looking cellar." was all I heard from him for a good five minutes.  Then, the camera is poked back out from under the house.  I eagerly viewed the pictures he took.  Uh, oh.  That sure does not look like a cellar to me.  Michael grinned at me and muttered something about not wanting to store foodstuffs in that hole.  Me, either!  No way! My grand idea of a treasure laden cellar came crashing down around me.  THIS was no cellar!  This...this was some old septic tank!  This was a cesspool!  Ugh!  Ugh!! To think we have been living directly over an old cesspool was sort of unnerving.  Well, now.  I am sure glad that the thing had caved in before Son scooted himself across it!  Even though the thing was nigh on a half century old and dried, falling into any hole about eight feet deep would not have been fun.  

  I figured that the folks who lived here before Mark and I built the Little Bayou House must have used this hole as their septic tank.  We just never knew it was there.  Perhaps when Hurricane Katrina shoved tons of  saltwater up under our house, the metal casing rusted and caused the thing to cave in upon itself these many years later.  Now there is just this huge, gaping hole. What else am I going to find on this hill? Things are strange at times!  Cellar!  Bah!  Michael, April Fool's Day has already passed!  Quit teasing your old mom!