It's Raining Crabs?

Moving to a tropical country, it was not surprising to us that we would see a lot of rain. We have had some amazing rain showers since the rainy season began in May. Of course, we got off to a great start when tropical storm Agatha blew through. We live on the slope of a hill and our street becomes a river (a very brown river) when it rains hard. During Agatha, it rained so hard and fast that the water was pushing boulders up to a foot in diameter down our street.

What we did not expect was to have a certain crustacean find its way into our house. And, not just once, but twice. The first time, Jonah and Maddie discovered our cat Daisy playing with something on the floor of our living room. At first, they thought it was a bat and were screaming to get it away from the cat. The thing managed to get away from Daisy and it scrambled into the garage to hide. At first, we couldn’t find it. But, because of Jonah’s persistent searching, we discovered, hiding under a shelf behind some boxes, a crab. It was about 5 inches in diameter, and ready for a fight! We all screeched and laughed with surprise! It was the last thing we thought we would find scurrying around our house!
I tried to capture the crab, but it kept moving around under the van so I couldn’t get to it. Finally, I had to give up and hope it found it’s way out of the garage. Kathy was a little nervous to get up at night to use the restroom! (There is no door to close between the house and garage, it’s just open.) Well, by morning it was gone.
Now, if that was not strange enough, a couple of weeks later, while Kathy was doing some school work with Jonah and Maddie on the couch, Jonah looked up towards the sliding glass door and said “Oh Wow, what is that?” At first, we all thought he saw something scary, like a huge spider. He pointed to the top of the sliding door, and upon closer inspection, we realized that sitting on the ledge was a crab.



As you look at the picture, I know the first question that came to your mind was “How in the world did that crab get up there?” Ours too! The last we knew, crabs can’t walk up walls or glass. So, the only thing that we could figure is that we left the door open because it was very humid after the heavy rain we had the night before. Possibly, the crab wandered into the house, tried to get out through the back door, climbed up the screen to the ledge above and got stuck there.


When it finally stop raining I got a broom handle and tried to knock him into a bucket. He instead grabbed the handle and hung on for dear life. Once I got him into the bucket, Jonah, Maddie and I went down to the river to let him go. We just never know what to expect here in San Julian.