🚀 go-pugleaf

I remember the long trips back from the Jersey coast,
after a day of catching blue-claw crabs from my dad's
boat.  The crabs would survive, in dry bushel-basket,
all the way back to kitchen, where mom would start the
kettle of water boiling.  How menacing they seemed,
when we tried to fish them out of the basket with long
metal tongs!  Sometimes they would slip from our grasp,
pot along the kitchen floor in a last-ditch effort
to escape, not knowing that they were a good forty miles
from any place that would be habitable to them.

When we caught them, we would drop them quickly into
the boiling water, and slam the lid on the pot
immediately, so they couldn't jump out.  After an
agonizing ten seconds, we would lift the lid, and often
the crab would make a last grab at us, the tongs, or
life.

Later, on the plate, shells boiled orange-pink, their 
eyes would be permanently locked in an accusing 
stare.  They were pretty good, with cocktail sauce.

--mark