Crawdads, Crayfish or Crawfish

One of the first lessons I learned from traveling is that the same thing can be called by many different names depending upon where you are. Growing up in Middle Tennessee, everyone I knew drank water from a “hose pipe” in the summer, but in a hardware store in Central Florida you will be instructed that it is actually called a “garden hose.” When I was trying to learn enough Spanish to get by in Central America I kept getting confused whenever I would ask for a carrizo (drinking straw), until I learned that virtually every Spanish speaking country has a different word for it (there are at least eleven different words). The point being, the same thing can be called a different thing depending upon where you are, which brings me to crawfish, or is it crawdads, or is it crayfish?

I first encountered one of these crawling creek critters at our farm on Chicken Creek, or more accurately, in Chicken Creek. While playing in the creek, exploring, and throwing rocks like little boys do, I lifted a rock from the creek bed and was fascinated by what I found. It might as well have been an alien. It had a strange fan-like tail, ten legs and an armor-plated body that was the same color as the creek bottom. One part of its body that stood out, both for being terrifying, and tipped with a bright orange: the claws, or pinchers, as we called them. With a mixture of curiosity, excitement, and fear, I put my hand into the water to grab it for a closer examination, only to be further enraptured when I saw it dart away backwards. When I first asked for a name to put with this bizarre, and slightly terrifying creature, I was told it was called a “crawdad.” To this very day, if I am down by a creek, I will lift up a rock or two to see if I can catch a glimpse of one.

Over the next few years, I logged countless hours honing and perfecting my crawdad catching technique until I was a self-appointed expert in the field. 

Catching a crawdad requires four skills: 

1) Speed (a spooked crawdad can escape in reverse faster than the Duke boys); 

2) Sneakiness (you have to approach them low and from behind so they can’t see you coming); 

3) Patience (they are good at kicking up mud and clouding the water to get away, so you have to wait for the water to clear up); 

4) Courage,  the most important ingredient of all. If you’ve ever had one of those little guys latch onto you with those pinchers you know exactly what I mean.

Just when I thought Chicken Creek and the fantastic beasts that occupied it couldn’t get any more amazing, I discovered buried treasure. One day, while walking across the pasture from the creek to the house, I noticed a dozen or more little temple shaped mud mounds with holes in them on the ground. My next step was to do what I always did when I wanted answers, I asked my uncle Ryan what they were. Nothing could have prepared me for the revelation I was about to experience. Ryan taught me how to lower a stick down into the hole, feel for the grab and then quickly pull out the stick and sit in awe at the subterranean beast dangling from it. I only thought I knew crawdads. These holes were dug by large blue crawdads, and when I say blue, I mean such a dark blue that some appeared almost purple or black. If you were lucky you might catch a crawdad in the creek that was a little bigger than a Matchbox car, and by comparison these underground blue crawdads were often the size or your whole hand. This discovery sealed the deal for me, and I was forever caught in their grip.

Chicken Creek was my practice field, but the creek behind the Exchange Little League Baseball Park was where I performed. When we weren’t playing baseball, we were walking across the 12-inch drainpipe to the other side of the creek to eat honeysuckle and catch crawdads. If you were wearing your baseball uniform and had a game that night you had to be extra careful not to fall in and get wet and muddy while trying to navigate the slimy and slippery rocks in baseball cleats. Weeknights in the summer a couple dozen boys would nearly stomp that creek dry trying to catch the biggest, the most, or the weirdest looking crawdad. We kept our prized catches in water filled, wax lined paper Coke cups from the concession stand, until it was time to go home or take the field, at which point we tossed them back into the creek. On a recent visit to Exchange Park it dawned on me that this “creek” was actually a sewage run off ditch, which they have since made inaccessible with a large chain link fence. Looking back, I guess I should count myself lucky that I caught crawdads and not hepatitis. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Growing older has a way of changing your focus and catching crawdads in the creek was eventually replaced with trying to catch the attention of the girls swimming in the creek. Not unlike the crawdads, I would learn this too required patience and courage, and though they didn’t have pinchers, girls could hurt you twice as bad as a crawdad. 

Though I moved on from crawdads, I would soon be introduced to the crayfish. Remember how I said the same thing can be called by different names depending on where you are? Well, what was known as a crawdad on Chicken Creek, was called a crayfish in freshman Biology class at . It has been my experience that the only person who calls this critter a crayfish is a scientist.

Our introduction to anatomy came via dissection. We started out with things like worms and insects, but then came the day my old friend the crawdad was staked out on that weird and gross black wax that looked and smelled like a pan of brownies gone horribly wrong. Having logged countless hours in the creek with these guys I was already very familiar with every part of its body, only now I was required to learn all about the inside of its body, and what to call it all.                              

The crawdad’s Latin name is cambarus bartonii; and he didn’t have pinchers, those are actually legs, and they are called chelipeds. His tail is actually his abdomen and that armor plating is just a chitin-based carapace. We did get one thing right on Chicken Creek, those long things sticking off his head, I mean, cephalothorax, are actually called antennae. The wax was gross, the preservative fluids smelled disgusting, so needless to say, I wasn’t a fan of the crayfish.

Having spent the better part of my 44 years curious about these little lobster look-alikes, I’m convinced that crawdad is just a nickname, crayfish is their legal name, but he prefers you just call him crawfish.

Before I could drive a car, I met, what would become one of my lifelong friends, Jode. His family moved to Tennessee from Louisiana and little did I know, at age 15, but this chance meeting would be the first domino to fall in my love of all things pertaining to Louisiana culture. His family became my extended family. I loved being around them and everything about them, from the music, to the accents, to the attitudes, and ultimately, the food. His momma, Ms. Diane, made a boy raised on beans and taters fall in love with shrimp, and oysters, and crabs, and, the Tennessee crawdad’s crazy Cajun cousin, the crawfish. The circle was now complete: you catch crawdads, you dissect crayfish, but you eat crawfish.

As an adult I have little reason to catch crawdads, unless I’m introducing children to the fun of catching them, and I have zero desire to ever dissect another crayfish, unless you are referring to ripping apart crawfish to pinch the tail and suck the head. I mean pinch the abdomen and suck the cephalothorax. In a stroke of serendipity, I was first pinched by a crawdad in Chicken Creek when I was only five or six years old, and when I was fifteen, in Jode and Ms. Diane’s cabin, which is just a few hundred yards upstream from that very spot, I was bitten by the mudbug. Boiled crawfish, crawfish etouffee, crawfish corn bisque, crawfish Monica, crawfish bread, crawfish pie. I’m pretty sure if they made Crawfish Cheerios I’d eat that for breakfast. I even play the Elvis song “Crawfish” from the King Creole soundtrack on my record player during crawfish season. Crayfish, crawdads, or crawfish, call them whatever you like, just be sure to call me when they are ready to eat.

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