lazarus

A few weeks ago we made a fateful trip to a local park that has a crystal-clear stream running through it. I brought along nets and buckets for the boys to catch things in, naively thinking they would be content to look at whatever they came up with and return it to the water when we left. Needless to say, we came home with a crawdad.

Thank goodness for the internet. I was able to research how to create a crawdad habitat and after a quick trip to Walmart and about $20, we were set. The crawdad seemed content in his new home and besides the fact he had sharp claws and couldn't be held, he seemed like a pretty cool pet. He was also apparently a healthy, growing little guy because after just a couple of days he molted, shedding his skin in what appeared to be an exact replica of himself. Totally gross. But thanks again to the internet we learned that this was a good sign and we should leave the skin in the cage for him to eat to replenish his calcium supply.

A couple more weeks went by and it was time for our family vacation to Texas. We enlisted a neighbor who was not intimidated by caring for our animals while we were gone. Our cat, fish, lizard and crawdad were in good hands.

Then on the 4th of July as we were visiting with family and friends in Comfort, Texas, we got the call. Our neighbor informed us the crawdad was dead. Ug. My husband asked him to remove the body but leave the water filter running so it wouldn't get stinky while we were gone. Then we had to decide how to break the news to our son. The same son who had lost a hamster just a few months earlier.

My husband thought that maybe if he presented it in a matter-of-fact way instead of a doom-and-gloom way, our son would take his cue from us and not over-react. He was wrong. After hearing the news, our boy collapsed in a heap, sobbing uncontrollably. We explained to him that it wasn't anybody's fault and we would get him another pet when he was ready. He said he didn't want another pet. He crawled into bed and wanted to be left alone. It didn't help things that he had just contracted pink-eye the day earlier and looked like he'd been beaten with a stick. The "vacation" was not ending on a good note. When he finally recoverd enough to get out of bed, his big brother asked him, "So do you want to die so you can see your crawdad again in heaven?" to which he replied, "No. He's in crawdad heaven." Well duh.

We flew home the next day and didn't get in until late. As we transferred our sleeping children from the truck into their beds, our son peered into the aquarium next to his bed and said, "Dad! I saw my crawdad!" My husband somberly shook his head. "No, buddy. I'm sorry but he's gone." He rolled over and went to sleep.

The next day I got up and started unpacking and getting things back to normal. I checked my email and sadly deleted my crawdad information links from my list of favorites. I wandered into my son's room to open his blinds and lo and behold, there was a crawdad staring at me. I thought, "Great, he left the body in there after all." But then it moved. It was alive. My husband called our neighbor and asked if he had somehow replaced our deceased pet but he said no. When he heard that there was a living crawdad in our tank he said, "No way. I pulled a whole animal out of there and flushed it away." Then it dawned on us: The crawdad had molted, not died! I was elated but my soon-to-be five-year-old boy played it cool. After all the drama when he thought it was dead and he couldn't muster up a whoop or anything. Typical guy.

So the crawdad, previously named "Rex" is now dubbed "Lazarus".

Long live Lazarus.