Crawdads

Do you call them crayfish? crawdads? mudbugs? Anybody know another name for them? Whatever you call them, we've been catching them! When we first moved in to this neighborhood and walked around the then almost-empty irrigation pond, we noticed lots of dead crayfish shells lying in the mud. Since then, we've thought it would be fun to catch some. We finally got around to trying. First, John put bacon on his fishing hook and tried it that way. He said they grabbed on and starting eating the bait, but would let go before he could get them up. So John did some research and found out how to build a trap. It has funnels leading in to each end of the cylinder, so they crawl in to eat, but they can't figure out how to get back out. Apparently, crawdads aren't very smart. Here are pictures of our mudbuggin' adventures (click on them to see larger versions):

The Trap

3 Crawdads Caught
I don't think they like having their picture taken! It was a little scary to see them all coming towards me with snapping claws as I snapped this shot.
John showed the kids how to hold them, . . .
and warned them to avoid the big claws . . .
Helene is proud of herself for not being too girly-girly.

Unfortunately, she chose the most flexible crawdad!