When we were kids we lived in Carson City for part of our kidhood. And right about 30-45 minutes away was Lake Tahoe. I say 30-45 minutes away because it depends on which car my parents owned at the time. They had a white Volvo stationwagon that was so slow that it could possibly have been 90 minutes to Tahoe. They also had at one point in time a Suburban that was really fast, and really lifted, which made it really unsafe to drive to and from Lake Tahoe on US Highway 50. I take that back, it was safe if you went 20 miles an hour.

As kids we would go out in between the large rocks and boulders near parts of the shore and try to catch ‘Crawdads’ or Crayfish. Those critters were fun to catch because we would entice them out with bacon on a string, or bacon on a coat hook, and sometimes bacon on a large sheet of plywood. Pretty much anything with bacon got their attention. We loved to catch them and put them in a cooler so that we could show off our catch to our parents, other onlookers and gross out our sister and her friends. Now I think Becky would just cook them.

Well, I think that the nickname ‘crawfish’ should have caught our attention. Because fish, when they get dead and old, start to stink. And they don’t stink a little, they stink like you were buried up to your eyeballs in dead flesh. I mean that in the nicest way possible Crayfish activists. My brother and I somehow talked our parents (or parent if only one parent happened to take us up to Tahoe, I can’t recall which) into letting us take a few home as ‘pets.’ But crayfish don’t actually eat bacon alone, and they need their water changed and circulating. They also don’t live in a cooler as a native habitat. Coolers don’t provide those very important things that crayfish need to stay alive. And so it began. The stench slowly built up in the garage (mom wisely would not let us keep them in the house). And the crayfish moved slower and slower. And the use of ‘and’ to start off a sentence began to be beaten into our heads at school. And we did it anyway.

The crayfish died. But the smell lingered on, we didn’t want to throw them out because we didn’t want to get close enough to the cooler to get rid of the crayfish and then take on the responsibility of cleaning out the cooler. My parents finally made us do it. It was sad, gross and a valuable lesson: don’t bring home pets you’re perfectly glad to go visit in their native habitat. Which is why I don’t own dogs. I’m more than glad to go visit them in parks when other people are walking them in their native habitat.