Drink Rum

Monday brought massive rain to my house. I was pretty convinced that my basement was going under, but it held. We didn't lose electricity and the creek behind the house gave us a big scare, but eventually went back to being within a hundred yards of its original banks. The sump pump was working overtime keeping the basement dry, but it was making a mess of the backyard. I was worried that all the water now ponding in the back would be another threat so I decided to engineer a solution. I decided to duct tape a hose into the pvc pipe running out of the house and run the hose to a storm drain in the street. So I headed around to the side of the house with tape and hose. I took a good look at the volume of water being pumped out of the 3 inch diameter pvc pipe in a torrent and was suddenly skeptical of using my 1 inch garden hose as a conduit. But I shrugged and decided to give it a go. If you've ever seen the 3 Stooges episode "A Plumbing We Will Go", you've got a good idea of what happens when you try to do a plumbing exercise on a pipe that's belching out large volumes of water. I did manage to keep from caging myself in with pipe and also to not pipe water into the electrical equipment... eventually leading to water inside lightbulbs ("this house is show gone crazy!"). During the aquatic fun, I look down and there's a little monster attacking me foot.

There's a big crayfish doing its best to kill me via my boot. It was vicious. If it could have talked it probably have been saying, "cha! cha-cha! cha!" as it alternated left-right pinchy stabs at my foot. I didn't have time to deal with a pissed off crustaceon so I flicked it away with my boot and refocused on the "ol faithful" of a pvc pipe/garden hose project I was working on.

Finally I got all the water from the pipe running through the hose and into the street. I stood proud... and wet at my accomplishment.

I walked down the hill a little ways to go check on the swamp of my backyard and immediately another mudbug attacked. I thought he was surrendering actually. When I had stepped in his direction, he stood up out of the water and threw both claws in the air the way a Frenchman responds to a German. Little did I know that it was a trap. The little freak apparently had been watching the Matrix and tried to bust some Neo moves on my boot. Like his friend... he was punted. He landed with a splash and immediately, ten more crayfish "surrendered".

I was now a bit wierded out. I looked around and my yard/swamp was crawling (very literally) with crayfish. I wasn't interested in fighting them... especially since they outnumbered me greatly and I was on their soggy turf.

And I was starting to feel like I was in a bad horror film or Twilight Zone episode. Attack of the Crawdad. The hell if I was going to be someone else's late night TV entertainment.

With the water levels declining, the crayfish are retreating... but they're still out there. Every now and then I'll see one... crossing my driveway... peeking out from the bushes... attacking a bird.

I think the only way I'll ever be rid of them is if I bring up a Cajun to my house. Cajuns are the Black Flags of the crayfish world. And 'gators.

I did go inside and drink a Hurricane... since I was having a N'walins moment.