A different both sides now

On July 24th I stopped at the northeast corner of E. Howard Ln. and The Lakes Blvd. to see what I could do photographically with the tall column of water in a fountain there. When I got near the pond from which the water shot up, I noticed a little object on the ground. At eye height I couldn’t tell what it was, so I bent down for a better look. It turned out to be the claw of a crawfish (or crayfish, or crawdad, as you prefer), and an interesting little thing it was. To take some pictures, I held the claw in the tips of a couple of fingers on my left hand and wielded the camera with my right. Because the two sides of the claw were so different, I’ve shown you both views. An alligator, anyone? I should add that this was hardly the first time I’d found and photographed a disembodied crawfish claw; the last time I showed you one was in 2015.

Here’s an unrelated interesting fact: methuselah is the name given to a large container of champagne that holds about six liters. You may recall that Methuselah was a biblical patriarch said to have lived 969 years. Perhaps for Methuselah a methuselah a day kept old age away. UPDATE: even bigger sizes exist.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Surrealism

Surrealism was an early-20th-century literary and artistic movement that promoted the juxtaposition of incongruous things. I think you’ll agree with me that surrealistic is a good way to describe this little scene that I found near Tejas Camp in Williamson County on January 23. How a dead crawfish came to be lying upside down on a bunch of greenbrier vines (Smilax bona-nox) I don’t know. This spot was several hundred feet from, and considerably higher than, the nearest water, which was the north fork of the San Gabriel River, so I doubt a crawfish would have managed to walk here, much less climb up on these vines. In fact I doubt crawfish climb vines at all, but some knowledgeable reader may want to disabuse me of that idea. So what’s left? Did someone who was hiking near the river find a dead crawfish, carry it around for a while, then decide that was a strange thing to be doing and dump the crawfish on top of these vines? Could a bird have caught and killed the crawfish, started flying away with it, and then accidentally dropped it? Your suggestions are welcome.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

From 2012

Click for greater size and clarity.

On April 30, 2012, I wandered in the relatively wild southern part of Great Hills Park and came across a tangle of dried algae in the bed of the main creek there. Lying on the algae was the tiny disembodied claw of what I take to have been a crawfish. Strange and a bit creepy, don’t you think?

© 2015 Steven Schwartzman