Around The World In 80 Waves

Not for the first time on this trip I got back home to discover a crab had moved into my room!

Now it looked strangely like the crab on the cover of The Fat of the Land album by The Prodigy, so I am going to call him Keith.

As soon as I stepped through the door Keith raised his claws defiantly and then scuttled off into a hiding place, which kind of set the tone for the game that we played for the next twenty minutes.

Keith was an elusive character and I was absolutely shattered when I had gone to my room so wasn’t really in the mood for the game he seemed to be enjoying so much. I certainly wasn’t going to allow him to be crawling around the room and possibly over me while I slept so he had to go.

The way the game worked is that I would pick up some utensil, box lid, shoe or equivalent and approach stealthily. Using the loo as an example, which you can see him hiding behind here, he would then speedily scuttle around the other side rendering my distance maintaining object inaffective. I would then hurry around the other side of any number of objects only for him to do exactly the same going the other way.

Ocassionally I would corner him behind a door or equivalent but with the kind of bobbing and weaving of which Muhammad Ali would be proud, and with strength that his size would not suggest he would grip hold of the base of the door fending off any attempt to free him with his spare claw. I would then rush to grab a more suitable utensil or crab trap such as the bin only to discover he had run back behind the loo or equivalent as soon as my back was turned, and we would be back to square one.

Now I was trying to be cool with the crab and just get it outside, but every now and then he mould make a lunge for one of my flip flopped feet. At first it was funny but after more than 10minutes of this in the heat and humidity and because I was so tired anyway I eventually grabbed my boots (checking to make sure there was not anything funky inside them before putting them on). All I will say is that it didn’t go too well for the crab from there.

Rob 1 Crab 0