Grumpy Crab

Its hard to keep your chin up when you don’t even have one. Its even worse when you’ve been kidnapped from your home, cramped into tight quarters and forced to wait out the last hours of your life crawling on top of your compadres. Sure, you’d rather be on top where you can breathe and move around a bit, but then you face the chances of looking meaty and delicious and find your way to the boiling pot right quick. It’s a tough life when you’re only a customer away from being cooked alive; no wonder Grumpy Crab’s crabby.


Still, its better than being one of the Horse-Shoe Crabs in the next bin over, already legs up, on-ice. And Grumpy Crab can’t possibly be the only one to find the Prawn’s fate cruelly ironic: suffocated, surrounded by water too cold, too hard for them to breathe.

Grumpy Crab’s heard of crazier escapes though. He can breathe air, unlike those mindless Sea Bugs, swimming like Lobster tails without bodies. Therefore, with some precise pinches and some quick scuttling, Grumpy Crab could be back in The Sea by nightfall.


Back in The Sea other crabs claimed legendary escapes, slipping rubber bands off their claws, snipping a finger off a chef and scooting deftly back to the beach before apprehension. The Escape Crab even had the finger to prove it, though it certainly did look a lot like a piece of dead coral. “Dead coral or not”, Grumpy Crab declared, “the world’s my oyster and I’ll never be dipped in melted butter with garlic.”

Such conviction, especially from a crab, was inspirational. Thus, Faith and I opted for shrimp in Tom Yam Goong and Sea Bugs cooked in garlic.