Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Crawfish in a Jar

Crawfish in a Jar

Last updated on: May 28, 2019 at 2:16 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Crawfish in a Jar 2019-05-28T14:16:17-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

When I was a girl, we used to vacation deep in the heart of West Virginia every year. There was a stream that ran past the rental cabins, where my cousins and I would catch crawfish in Dixie cups and put them in a jar of water. Crawfish are difficult to catch because they scoot backwards if you come at them from the front– that’s how you outsmart them. You lift the rock they’re hiding under, and then you poke them in front with a stick until they dart backwards into the cup. In the jar, they would scoot around backward in circles, seeking cover but finding nothing.

Lately, I feel like a crawfish in a jar.

We are still in the rental house in Steubenville. Every year, our grand plan to move to a different part of Northern Appalachia falls through. Every year, I think we’re a little bit closer and this will be our Great Escape, and every year something goes spectacularly wrong.

I daydream about what I’ll do when we move. Our poverty won’t disappear, but if all goes well it will be a bit easier. I plan what the house will look like, if we buy a fixer-upper I’m allowed to paint: the blue toile wallpaper in the dining room and the teal accent wall in the parlor, the Special Plates in a curio cabinet, the icons in the beautiful corner actually nailed to the wall instead of being stuck to wood paneling with Command tape. Sailboat wallpaper for Rosie’s room, and permission to nail up superhero posters and memorabilia in the way she likes. peel-and-stick fake wood floors all over the downstairs– I will never have to deal with a stained carpet again.

Sometimes I plan the garden as well. I’ll never have the strength to be a farmer, but I am obsessed with urban eco guerilla gardening. I have plans for every conceivable type of yard. The first thing I’m going to do, if I ever get out of here, is kill off the grass at our new place and plant a clover lawn for Rosie to play on. Clover hardly ever gets high enough to need mowing, and it smells Heavenly. The next thing I’m going to do is get an apiary, a beehive, a whole colony of pets to feast on my clover. Next, a chicken tractor and a few fat hens, for the eggs and the free fertilizer and for company. I could never kill a chicken. I will have at least three keyhole garden patches: a spring and autumn patch with onions and snap peas; a Three Sisters patch with purple stringbeans, heirloom sweet corn and pie pumpkins; and a patch dedicated entirely to zucchini and summer squash. I will grow brassicas on the shady side of the house where sensible people grow hostas. There will be a tasteful display of indigenous wildflowers where it can be seen from the street. I’ll drape grapes and climbing roses over the porch and plant lilacs and honeysuckle where I can smell them from the kitchen window. In the front yard, pretty enough to be decorative trees, there will be a postage-stamp orchard of dwarf peaches.

All Rosie wants is a dog.

We can’t have a puppy at the rental house, nor chickens, and I don’t see the point of planting a tree. The yard is neither grass nor clover but random weeds. We have a small vegetable patch in the back planter. If Rosie plays out back too long, or I spend too long in the garden, our paranoid neighbor lets out her German shepherd, on a chain which is just a bit too loose, to stand on our side of the property line and bark at us. Sometimes she comes out herself, clad in a bathrobe and pajamas; she pulls up weeds from her side of the property line with a rake and dumps them on ours, ranting. She calls Rose our “boy-girl,” and calls Michael and me “rats,” “f*ckers” and “the last of the Aryan Amish.” I still don’t know what she means by that last one. Once, a couple of years ago, she waved a kitchen knife and invited us to come over “so I can cut you up, b*tch.” But the knife was still in its flowered cover, and she never crossed the property line.

We run inside when we see her coming.

I used to call the police after she harassed us, but they keep telling us to “de-escalate,” so now we run inside. But I can still hear her ranting at our windows.

Sometimes I lock myself in the bathroom and take a long shower so I won’t hear a sound.

We have another neighbor who comes to the door asking to mow our lawn, or asking for money if the lawn doesn’t need mowing. At first I gave him some if we had any, but now I don’t. He showed up at nearly one in the morning and startled me one night, and then this Sunday just after he came again, some things went missing from the porch. So I plan to pretend not to hear the knock.

I’m good at pretending not to hear knocks. If I hear anyone on the porch, I hide in the kitchen, and when the kitchen isn’t far enough I hide in the laundry room. But the laundry room is a few feet from our paranoid neighbor and her dog. I can hear the chain jangling as I cringe by the washing machine.

I am a crawfish swimming round and round my jar, trying to make it bearable, hoping to avoid the stick.

When I was a girl, we tried to keep the crawfish in a jar overnight so my uncle, who liked to fish in the river, could use them as bait early the next morning. He found the jar empty– raccoons had eaten all the captives cowering there with nowhere to hide. So he filled the jar with soil and worms and brought them along. I remember looking in surprise at our crawfish prison later that day– no water, no scaly baby lobsters, only black loam.

When we got older, my male cousins grew mean. It wasn’t enough to catch crawfish; they wanted to make them wrestle. They’d pick them up out of the jar to make them open up their big front claws, then push them together to make them claw each other. With enough coaxing, the crawfish would grapple and wrestle until one of them was dead.

Once, when they didn’t die fast enough, my cousins sprayed them with bug spray to see what would happen.

And then they graduated to other animals– toads, minnows, anything else they could catch.

I stopped catching animals and went into the opposite business– liberating the prisoners back into the stream while my cousins were at dinner, saying nothing about it, and hoping they thought it was the raccoons again.

Once, they caught a great big mud puppy, or another salamander about that size– West Virginia has many such creatures lurking in the streams. They put him in his own jar and went to dinner, boasting about what they might to do to him later.

I can’t stand mud puppies. Their slick skin repulses me; it reminds me of worms.

But I couldn’t stand the thought of what my cousins would do.

While they were at dinner, I slipped out and picked up the jar with the mud puppy in it. The mud puppy convulsed when he felt the jar lift up– I talked soothingly to him, hoping he wouldn’t manage to jump out and slither over my hand. If he did that, I’d scream, and get caught. I talked to him all the way down the short road– not to the stream, but to the artificial lake where the stream let out. There was much more chance of his not getting caught again if he was far from our vacation cabin and in the lake.

I poured the jar out near the shore. The repulsive creature slid out with a plop. I saw him slither on the sand and then dart through the water– swimming, salamanders are nearly beautiful. They’re only disgusting when they’re still.

I don’t remember any more crawfish-catching incidents after that. I think, somewhere along the line, we must have grown up.

I didn’t remember the mud puppy incident until today, as I was sitting down to write this story– a slimy and repulsive eccentric woman, daydreaming of freedom, darting around her house, trying to find a quiet place to hide.

I hope that someday soon I am shown mercy, now that I am a crawfish in a jar.

(image via Pixabay)

Previous Post

May 27, 2019

At Almost Eight Years Old...

Next Post

May 29, 2019 What do you Do With a Bicycle Thief?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Where was Jesus praying the night before He was crucified?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Antioch The Garden of Gethsemane Tarsus Galilee