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Strange occurrences in daily life

Le Baron

Le Baron

Unbiased advice at reasonable rates
I had one today. I was coming back from the supermarket on the push bike and turned into a road near where I live. There's a large pond there with grass/trees, the works. Anyway, in the road in front of me is a sizeable freshwater lobster. I stopped and it spread out its claws in that way they do to give me a warning.

I pointed it out to some other fellow cycling past, but as usual he just thought I was a nutter pointing at the road. People are blind sometimes. Then this other fellow stopped and took out a phone and started taking photos of it.
I said: 'Perhaps we should move it off the road or it'll get flattened.'
He said, 'yeah I'm going to take a photo and show my wife!'
And his child was shouting: 'it's a crab! It' a crab!

The Dutch get confused between crab/lobster because of the use of the word kreeft.

So whilst he was taking a photo of it and it looked like it was posing, I picked it up and took it back near the water. It's not something you see every day.
 
If it had red claws ,then it was probably an American signal crayfish which is the equivalent to the grey squirrel to our native red squirrel population.They are a disaster to our native crayfish.If it was putting it back was a mistake
 
mik_rik said:
If it had red claws ,then it was probably an American signal crayfish which is the equivalent to the grey squirrel to our native red squirrel population.They are a disaster to our native crayfish.If it was putting it back was a mistake
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Now that's very interesting. I shall keep this in mind. Being a vegetarian the idea that I might dispose of it differently didn't occur to me.

What should I have done with it? I'd like to know for next time.
 
Le Baron said:
I had one today. I was coming back from the supermarket on the push bike and turned into a road near where I live. There's a large pond there with grass/trees, the works. Anyway, in the road in front of me is a sizeable freshwater lobster. I stopped and it spread out its claws in that way they do to give me a warning.

I pointed it out to some other fellow cycling past, but as usual he just thought I was a nutter pointing at the road. People are blind sometimes. Then this other fellow stopped and took out a phone and started taking photos of it.
I said: 'Perhaps we should move it off the road or it'll get flattened.'
He said, 'yeah I'm going to take a photo and show my wife!'
And his child was shouting: 'it's a crab! It' a crab!

The Dutch get confused between crab/lobster because of the use of the word kreeft.

So whilst he was taking a photo of it and it looked like it was posing, I picked it up and took it back near the water. It's not something you see every day.
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are you in the UK?
 
They are very tasty and they thrive in our waterways and people buy traps(check on Youtube).However they are much larger than native species and devour anything they find- think of them as an aquatic Cane Toad .Travelling overland is no problem to them - if it was one that is
They were imported and kept in ponds ,but guess what happened when rivers flooded
 
Yup, that will be a signal cray. and yes, technically illegal to place back into the pond. (UK)
Plenty of rivers are stripped of pretty much everything by those things, they eat just about anything, from fish eggs to - well, you name it. then they build tunnels into banks etc, total disaster.
Impossible to eradicate once they are in any watercourse, unless total eradication of all life in said watercourse.
They do carry a 'plauge' virus that effectivly kills any native crays that are downstream of them.
Wait till you get 'motherless minnows' and zebra mussels, possibly mitten crabs, you then have a 'full house' in your pond!
 
Le Baron said:
Is it better if I just move to another village in case anyone finds out?
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LOL, nah, BBQ the buggers.
They really are bad news for your pond - they will devour all the frog / toad spawn for sure.
Slowly but surely eradicating anything edible.
They do taste good which is about the only thing for them.
Kingfishers have been seen eating small just moulted ones, and otters seem to take the odd few as well.
 
Signal crayfish make very good eating. When I was young we used to collect them in the Tarn river in France on summer holiday. A free lunch and good for the native aquatic life too.
 
gintonic said:
are signal crayfish as much of a problem to the waterways in the Netherlands as the UK?
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To be honest I hadn't even considered this. But I will be making enquiries after this thread. There has been a huge amount of rainfall in the last two months and several areas now have raised rivers. First time I've seen that though.
 
Many years ago, in my age of innocence, my kids brought a signal crayfish home from a reservoir in which, many years before, a friends father had bred them commercially. They (the kids) gave the crayfish a name, popped it in a container of water, and, as kids do, moved onto other things.

As the days passed, I began to feel sorry for Chris the Crayfish, and thought I should redeem my children's cold-hearted carelessness (not to mention my own guilt at having bred two such monsters), so I took him in a bucket down to the village, where a brook passed under an ancient bridge, climbed down the bank, and set him free. I was dismayed when he ungratefully and rather pallidly, rolled upside down, and caught in the current, floated limply away, undoubtedly well beyond hope.

I have of course since lost my innocence, and have learned that had the creature still had vigour in its veins, I would have unleashed riverine armageddon.

You do not stand alone in your erstwhile innocence, Le Baron.
 
In the NW of England you cannot catch signal crayfish without a licence.
And if you intend to eat them purge them for 24 hours in clean water.
 
Le Baron said:
I was also tricked by such a display of helplessness.
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You reminded me of an autobiographical detail from Clement Freud. He remembered being taken for a walk as a small boy by his grandfather, Sigmund Freud in Vienna when he spotted a man convulsing on the pavement as people walked up and placed money in the man’s hat. The young Clement asked why he didn’t give the man anything and the response came, “he wasn’t doing it well enough”.
 
I don't think you can catch them anywhere in the UK without a licence, I suppose this is to protect native species otherwise it should be encouraged.
 
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