The Bourbon news. [volume] (Paris, Ky.) 1895-19??, 1899-09-01

When the willy Crab Gets the Timid
Minnow and When the Min
now Gets the Grab.

The blue crab is pretty fair hand at
catching fish. 1t will lie in shallow
water motionless, with its pincer claws
extended and pincers open, waiting for
chance to nip minnow. If one COM
ing swimming along through the water
should happen to pass between those
open jaws, suddenly the jaws close and
that is the last of the mihnow. But
the blue crab can do better than this;
sometimes it will hold motionless III
one claw shred of something on which
it has been feeding as bait for min
nows, holding at the same time its 9TH
er big claw, with the pincer open, wait
ing. The minnows come up, charging
for the food held in the closed claw;
but there are likely to be enough OF
them to spread, and they may come
from various directions, so that more
than likely one will come within the
waiting pincers of the opposite claw,
and when one does the proceedings are
closed for the time being.
But sometimes the minnows get the
blue crab; as they may do when the
crab is shedding. The crab knows when
that time is coming, and then it makes
for a place where it can shed it's shell
and stay in safety until it's new shell
is sufficiently hard to protect it. The
crab comes in with the tide and makes
for some place on the bottom in shall
low water, perhaps along the edge of
the eel grass, or under some protecting
patch of ulva, and then proceeds to
dig a hole in which it can stay after it
has shed it's Shell until it is strong
enough to go about. 1t digs the sand
or mud up around from under itself,
and, as likely as not, leaves its discard
| ed shell, in a most lifelike form, up on
the sand on. the edge of the hole in
front of it. This shell would brighten
away some small fishes that would
not dare to tackle a crab in its Ordi-
nary condition. The discarded shell is
help to fishermen who are hunting
crabs, because it shows where a crab
may be found, and weakfish, which
come inshore in shallow water to feed,
hunt up soft crabs by searching the
neighborhood of the spot where they
| hhu ohCIIs JUST as q AlohOA man
would do.
! When the crab first sheds its shell it
is perfectly helpless. It's new shell is
as yet so soft that it is no protection
to it and no support; the crab cannot
even stand up. The she'll hardens rap
| idly, and it may be that by the time
of the next full tide the crab will be
able to move about and defend itself;
but for time after it sheds it is help
less.
That is when the minnow gets the
crab. The crab may have been lef,
by the receding tide above the edge
of the water. When the incoming tide
has again covered the crab and sur
rounded it with water to the depth OF
an inch or two the minnows may dis
cover it, and they come swimming
along through the shallow water tC
attack it. Sometimes a fisherman dis
4 covers a soft crab by the splashing that
the minnows kick up around it. If un.
disturbed the minnowS swarmine
around the. helpless crab will kill and
eat it. But sometimes another blue
crab will appear and break up the min
nows' feast. This is a blue crab that
has not shed it's shell, but has it's armOl
on. 1t comes stalking in among the
minnows, perhaps nipping one of then
in one of its pincer claws as it comes
up, and dispensing the rest.
The blue crab is cannibal; it viii
eat its own kind. If when this craf
comes up there is any of the soft crat
left the newcomer will very likely ca
that first, with one claw holding mean
while in its other the wriggling min
now which it had seized at the out
set, keeping that to top off within. Y
Sun.