Last night I got crab snapped… by Lake! He was grinding his teeth pretty vigorously. Of all things in an almost nine month old… teeth grinding. We’ve always thought he was wiser than his years: an old soul. But teeth grinding is a bit much. It sounds like grinding glass. So I do what any caring but not thinking mother would do… I reflexively stuck my finger in his mouth to separate his chompers. 

Snap!

… and hold…

All told he has eight teeth and one strong jaw.

Owa! 

Being crab snapped by Lake harkens back to an earlier anecdote. To the time just before I was just pregnant with him. I went crabbing with Michael and some of my family’s friends from Quinault, Chuck and Gary. We went in Gary’s little boat out into Puget Sound just off of Bainbridge Island. It was thrilling and romantic. Gary offered to marry Michael and me using his captains’ privileges. The crab pots were set out overnight and we all had our licenses to harvest. Chuck gleefully heckled us as we pulled up the crab pots trying to beat the setting sun. 

Faster! Faster! You weak city folk!

When it came time to count the bounty from our crab pots, I stuck my bare hands into the buckets with the writhing mass of live (mad) crabs and counted. One snapped and wouldn’t let go. Chuck being nearby (and maybe feeling a bit bad about the heckling?!) jumped in to intervene. I thought I was going to die or at least be back at Harborview with an amputated digit. He was finally able to pry the crab off my finger, but not before I had nerve damage that lasted for weeks. I couldn’t have been any happier to be killingly the crabs after that incident!