The Rains Come Down and the Crawfish Come Up

On Saturday morning we put together the church bulletin for Sunday Morning Worship Services.  We select the hymns, update the prayer list, edit announcements, and print it.  Then we drive over to church to make copies.  Our church is out in the country with farmland all around it.  It is less than a mile from our house.  The land directly east of the church is a rice field that also is a crawfish pond.  The farmer catches crawfish commercially and sells his catch.

In July, the farmer will slowly drain his pond as the oxygen content in the water drops due to the heat and the catch falls off.  Slowly draining the pond signals the crawfish to burrow down into the ground, reaching the water table.  There they will live for a few months until the weather cools off and it either rains a great deal or the farmer begins pumping his pond back up with fresh water.

Once it rains, the crawfish emerge from their holes.  The females will be carrying their little ones on their tails.  It is quite a sight!  When we drove up to the church, I noticed many crawfish in the parking lot.  They were lifting their pinchers up in the air aggressively, as if to say, "Get back!"

Russ and I stopped and picked them up and turned them over.  Sure enough, they were females and had maybe a hundred babies clinging to their tails:  You can zoom in and see the little ones!

This is a good sign for the neighboring crawfish farmer.  The old cajuns used to say, "You gotta wait for a good thundering to get them up outta da ground."  Sure enough, it thundered and rained 3.7 inches and the crawfish are all over the place.  The farmers around here need a good crop of rice and crawfish to make up for a dismal 2020.  Soon they'll put their traps out once again to catch and people around here will be anxious to boil them up.