And then, as if in slow motion on a film, it would reach out with a giant claw and grasp the bacon, drawing it carefully towards its strange mouth. When I was satisfied the creature was committed to keeping that bacon for himself, I would begin to tighten up on the string. Very slowly, I'd pull that dark red and purplish creature out of the water, matching his earlier slow motion. I always marveled that the creature could not tell when he left the water. Slowly, I'd maneuver the creature over my can or bucket, shake the line once or twice, and he'd release the bacon and plop right into the can.
People are a lot like crawfish.
I never realized that then, as a boy contemplating life in the Louisiana woods. It never occurred to me that people can get so fixated on possessing something their appetite demands, that they can't let go, even when it pulls them away from everything they love and from life itself. Drugs are that way, you know. But even more than those things, sex is, at least in America, the tempting morsel that will cause a man or woman to be drawn out of their relatively safe environment and be dropped into a boiling cauldron of emotion and hurt. But whatever one may believe about God and the Bible, it's difficult to argue with its veracity on the subject thousands of years ago.