Crustacean Massacre

As I was getting out of my car with my breakfast burrito this morning, my neighbor showed me a crustacean in the parking lot. "He's cold," she remarked, and covered him with a leaf.


The last time I saw one of these guys was two summers ago in the middle of the summer, also in my parking lot. I named him Lobby the lobster, and I saw him alive once before he got run over and squished. I guess these crawdads must live in the ponds at my apartments, but I never see them anywhere except in the middle of my parking lot.

When I left for my eyebrow appointment this afternoon, I saw that Lobby had been squished, which is to be expected. When I got home, though, there were four squished crawdads!

Poor Lobbies! The parking lot resembled the lake shore when I was a kid and we used to catch crawdads and smash them between rocks. (Those crawdads had rainbow guts, whereas these do not). Was it mass suicide? Or some sort of cruel pet murder?

Wow, today is not a good day for the wildlife at my apartment complex. As I was typing that last part, a squirrel ran up the tree outside my window, tried to jump onto the roof and missed, falling down to the mud two and a half stories below. I hope he's okay! He ran off, so it seems like he wasn't too badly hurt. Poor little insane squirrel!