Hank

I have told you about my son, and our Christmas adventures.

I will now tell you another story about my son. When he was about 5 or 6, his dad used to take him crawdad fishing, just for fun. You know, where you wrap a piece of bacon with string and toss it in the creek, and the crawdad grabs hold and starts eating it and forgets to let go when you pull it out of the water. Anyway, they went through a phase where they did that rather regularly. Well one day they came home with a LARGE crawdad, about 3 or 4 inches long. My son announced that he was keeping him and said the crawdad's name is now Hank.

Hank lived in our family for a long time, in a fish tank in my son's room. It was discovered that Hank had a fondness for McDonald's french fries, so everytime my son had some he would save one or two for Hank. Hank came out for family time, he would crawl around the house with my son following behind to make sure it didn't crawl under furniture or something.

One day, my son was carrying Hank around, as was his habit. He brought Hank outside where I was standing on the front porch doing something domestic. Hank was waving his little pinchers around, trying to get my attention. I stuck my finger out, Hank grabbed hold and pinched the everloving shit out of me. I yelped, jerked my hand back, and Hank went FLYING across the porch. My son was livid. He picked Hank up, who had sustained a compound fracture of his body armor in the unexpected flight. My son turned around and accused me of trying to murder Hank.

I tried to deny it, but what could I say, I did send the thing flying across the porch.

Hank eventually returned to normal, the crack healed up and Hank lived a good long time after that. I learned my lesson though. Crawdads are not trustworthy.