Step 1: Get fishing license and traps. 2: Set traps with rotisserie chicken scraps. 3: Check traps daily — all summer long! 4: Rebait after each daily harvest. 5: Boil in Louisiana or Texas seafood sprinkles. I use Crawcaine from Louisiana (yes, it’s a real thing. No MSG!) 6: Using dental tools, I extract the meat from the tails like a dentist: one at a time. (It’s the only way, really, when you think about it.) 7: Throw shells away**. 8: Mix 30 tails (per sammich) in mayonnaise and those sprinkles. 8: Serve chilled on white or wheat bread only. None of that flatlander’s sour dough shwag. Just one slice, folded over … mmmm.
** Not really. I skip this part.
Instead, I keep the matching tails and thorax and set them out to dry in the sun for a few days and then glue them back together one at a time. (Like, you know, a dentist.) By the hundreds.
They become my medium for assemblages requiring carpentry and various paints with a final epoxy resin pour … All winter long.
Estimated to have arrived at Lake Tahoe in the early 1900s, the invasive signal crayfish has ballooned up to 200 million in population. And, no, Mark Twain did not introduce the crustaceans to Lake Tahoe as he was back in Connecticut by then and no doubt waiting on exaggerated reports of his death.
~ Mark Palen, crawdaddyart.com. All pieces are a mix of acrylic, oil, resin, wood, and, of course, crawdads.
