bubbhism, the final evolution
Add comment May 11th, 2009
Posts filed under 'backhoe archeology (revisionist middens)'
crab aquaculture
Add comment March 20th, 2009
Like I said, the days of the Great Crab Drives are over. Stanwood fell into a century of decline and its heydays were lost in the mists of time. The great undersea Serengetti of Saratoga Straits gradually succumbed to over harvesting and illegal hunting until finally the entrepreneurs of the South End turned to aquaculture for economic viability and the days of free range crabbing were doomed.
For awhile we had the range wars. Fence cutting was common and violence too. The old South Enders didn’t take kindly to seeing the tidelands sectioned by barb wire. Devil wire, they called it and went out by moonlight to cut it open. Might as well try to stop the Gated Communities of today for all the good it’d do.
So finally the eelgrass pastures, once stretching from South Camano to Bristol Bay, were gridded and barbed and the old timers gave it up as a lost quixotic cause. When I first arrived in these parts, the old growth nettle forests were gone and so were the wild crabs. Oh, I know what they say: these farm raised crustaceans aren’t really all that different, but the old boys tell me the taste is mostly gone now. They say they dye em red artificially before taking em to market. They say they’re escaping and breeding with the last of the wild Dungeness so the wild ones will be lost forever. They say antibiotics and the food they give em – chopped up crab mostly – might give rise to strange diseases. There’s rumors of Mad Crab every month over at Tyee Store. And I gotta ya, I’ve seen peculiar behavior there myself.
But the world changes, that’s the truth, and there’s no going back. Pretty soon we’ll get Chinese crab grown in the Yangszte, 10 legged crustaceans painted red with lead paint. Cheap though. Real cheap. And another South End industry will bite the dust. Or the sand. And the legends of the crabs will be lost as surely as the nettle forests. So eat up. And don’t worry about that Mad Crab. Our crabs today are government inspected. So you know they’re safe…….
meteorology and how it relates to mating customs
Add comment November 16th, 2007
Down at my end of the island, the South End, we tell folks it rains 24/7 …. Times 365 days …. Hopin the only immigrants and refugees will be a few water skiers and maybe some scientists studying the flora and fauna of temperate rain forests. Truth is, it doesn’t rain much here. Oh, sure, it drizzles and mists and everything just this side of heavy dew, but we live in what the meteorologists, that’s a weatherman who still thinks meteors control atmospheric phenomena, call a Rain Shadow. I know, sounds like a bad radio show from the 40’s, but the South End, right after it was hit by asteroids, fell into it. Never the same again. Left a crater we call Puget Sound and after that the annual precipitation plummeted to under 25 inches a year. Science. A powerful tool.
25 inches isn’t a lot. I mean it’s not a desert, but frogs down here have to hurry past the tadpole stage and get right on to mating. Mating on the South End — and let’s be clear, I’m not venturing into the neighbors’ bedrooms –– I’m talking frogs. Polliwogs. Mating on the South End has to be PDQ. ASAP. They can’t wait for Viagara or amphibiagra. No sir, the pond’s drying up. And I don’t mean that metaphorically. Summer’s coming and the rains aren’t. Evolutionary frogs – if you swing that way – they’d probably forget the tadpole business and move into something a little drier. Your intelligent designer frogs would learn to pray for rain. Me, I’m a South Ender. I’m just glad I’m not a damn frog.
The point I’m desperately trying to make is this: us South Enders are natural born meteorologists. You got a well that goes dry when you run the washer and do the dishes and take a shower and wash the pick-up and sprinkle the garden, you KNOW the annual rainfall isn’t all that much. It’s an island. And the aquifer isn’t anything BUT that rainfall that drips from October to June off my clogged gutters. Maybe after the next meteor shower things’ll improve. For us and the toads. Until then, conserve. And mate fast …… the frogs, I mean.
