Ditch lobster in a drying Griegos Lateral, Albuquerque, June 9, 2022
Sorry I didn’t have the presence of mind to give you something for scale. This little critter was a a bit smaller than my hand, crawling along the bottom of the drying Griegos Lateral, one of the 1700s-era irrigation ditches on the Albuquerque Rio Grande Valley floor.
Drying kind early this year, because climate change.
The PhD’s at the Inkstain Science Laboratory can’t agree on the spelling – “crayfish” or “crawfish”. I’m going with “ditch lobster”.
2022’s gonna be a tough year for the ditch lobsters.
A.K.A.”mudbugs.”
Them’s good eatin’.
The last time I looked it up, all I could find is that the spelling is a regional preference (North vs South, East vs West) growing up in California I always called them Crawdads.
Oh, Man! 8-[ This pic out-does the gasping fish I used in 2005 as the baleful portent of things to come. I can just see Western water users going the way of these cannibalistic crawdads.