allow me to preface this post by saying that i like to think that i'm not super girly. yah yah yah i have fake hair and a 3-series, but i can usually man-up when the situation calls for it. well not in this case, sister. good god, these little fuckers creeped me out to no end. i don't know if it's because there were, oh, about a million of them, or if it's because they had evil, painted-on faces that seemed to look at you and say, "hey, i'm going to get 49 of my other friends and come back and eat you alive!" i think mostly tho it's because i'm completely scarred from childhood, from growing up in so cal with a pool, where you would come up from under water to find a ginormous potato bug staring you in the eye. eeeeeeeeeek. they were AWFUL! they looked like little old bald men, with all of their veins popping out in that clear forehead of theirs. sick, totally fucking sick.
ok, back to the crabs: i feel guilty using a picture from my google search, but by the time my zoom lens was no longer being held hostage in the safe, i didn't see too many of them. and there was NO WAY i was going to get any closer than i already was. we would either see them running around, or even worse, hear them scurrying about in the plants. ok, logically you realize that they are not going to come up and get you, but when you are outnumbered 500:1 it seems totally and completely possible.
we were lounging by the pool that first afternoon, and i saw one. then ten. then a hundred. then sandra chased one into the pool, which admittedly was pretty damn funny. (immediate note to self: always check pool for crabs before swimming.) miss h. was laughing at me for being such a puss about it, but what can i say -- she had never seen a potato bug! but my breaking point came when i was lying on my lounge, looking up at the wall, and i saw one peek over the edge. "fuck, it's going to jump!" so i was keeping my eye on him when i saw another one, and like before, suddenly there was an entire army. by this point i was convinced that they were going to band together in a suicide pact and jump down all at once. freaking out, i get off of my lounge chair only to remember that there were just as many on the ground. (((sweat beads))). i'm officially in hell.
as we drove to dinner that night we ran over a few in the driveway, which was fine by me because they were obviously not on any 'endangered species' list. but by the time we got to the road, there were THOUSANDS. i shit you not! thousands of them trying to cross the road (going i'm not sure where), so suffice it to say that i'm just really glad that we didn't decide to walk. can you imagine!?!? i probably would have had a coronary and dropped dead on the spot.
so while i was getting this sick and twisted pleasure by knocking the crab population down by 50%, miss h. felt bad (but she's always much nicer than i am, as you know.) so the next night i offered to drive, just to see how many i could take out. i felt like i was playing asteroids! wicked fun!
tho as the week went on, there were less and less of them. turns out that it had rained the night before we got there, and that apparently brings them out in droves. so they were all running down to the ocean to mate (at least they had a plan, right?) that night we saw them on the road. then as it got hotter, they went into hiding, which i was obviously quite happy about. tho by this point my zoom lens and i had been reunited and i really just wanted to get one good shot. oh well.
the best part of this whole new crab fear of mine probably came when we were ziplining, and i said to our guide, "crabs! yuck! no me gusta!" he laughed at my pathetic spanglish, and was the one who explained to us why they were currently out in full force. then he said, "well, be careful. a friend of mine was just visiting me, and when he got back home ..."
"omg, there was one in his suitcase!!!!"
"no, there were FIVE."
(GASP) "you mean ... they didn't die on the plane?!?!?!?"
"oh no, tia. THEY DON'T DIE."
needless to say, i re-packed and re-checked my bag about 10 times before we left.
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