A Little Journey to Deep Creek

If any reader of these lines has one or more enemies, he had better thank the stars that he is not a crab for whereas all the world loves a lover, everything that swims or crawls is the enemy of the blue crab. When the mother crab spawns her children sometimes number close to a million and it is estimated that only a hundred have a fair chance to grow to maturity. Man, fish, oysters, cats and even coons are enemies of the crab. And like some of the human species who will get drunk or will fight or will get angry at least provocation, the crab is the enemy of the crab, for the crab eats the members of his own family. The interesting animal known in the scientific world as Calinectes hastatus is a cannibal. When one looks at the crabs confined in a "crab float" one may witness the indoor sport of one crab eating another crab. Like the fat and lean cows in Pharoah's dream, the crab guilty of eating his own brother does not seem to be any fatter after he is thru eating. Remember, please, that the stomach of a crab is like a boy's stomach, a bottomless pit.

A visit to Deep Creek, Accomac County, Va., reveals several ways of catching brother crab. Some are caught by dragging a "scrape" from a skipjack (the typical sailboat of the Chesapeake Bay with tall masts and a triangular sial that can be reefed at will.) Others are caught closer to the shore by means of a round crab net attached to a long handle and many thousands are caught on a "trot line" some five hundred fathoms long to which about six hundred pieces of tripe are tied for bait.

If there is any other way of catching crabs, the watermen who live in the township of Deep creek, 5 miles northwest of Onancock, are familiar with it, for many of them make their living by crabbing, oystering, scalloping and fishing. The peaceful town with its comfortable homes and sturdy fishermen has among its population a number of men who know the ways of the weary crab like a farmer knows the soil. Speaking of different ways of catching crabs, have the readers of "The Enterprise" ever heard this one recorded in Brickell's "History of North Carolina?" He says that the coon is fond of crabs ,and when in search of them takes its station by the side of a swamp, and hanging its tail over into the water, the crab mistakes it for food ,and laying hold on it, the raccoon perceives it pinching, pulls up its tail with sudden jerk and lands the crab on the soil, where it suddenly seizes it in its mouth and quickly devours it. He is careful which way he seizes the crab, which he does transversely, to prevent the animal from inflicting wounds on his face with the nippers.

Children and sometimes older people ask the question "How does the crab grow in spite of his hard shell?" Every once in a while he sheds his shell and crawls out of it. When the writer was a boy he could never understand what became of the wool when he had such big holes in his stockings. Now he understands, for he had children of his own. The mystery of the hard and of the soft shell crab is explained by the shedding process. When the crab has crawled out of his shell, for a short time he has no shell and during this time he grows very rapidly. It is then that he is what we eat as a "soft shell" crab, that delicacy of the far-famed Eastern shore. After a while he covers himself with a new shell enough larger than the old one to accommodate his enlarged body. Then for a while he is a "hard shell' and does not grow. Later on he crawls out of his new shell and goes through the process all over again unless his unromantic life is suddenly interrupted by the cunning devices of the "waterman."

We have added two words to our vocabulary on our visit to Deep Creek. A "buster" is a crab that is neither "a peeler" nor a "soft crab." He is between the two and may shed during the next tide. A "buckram" is a "paper shell," too soft for answering the roll call of the hard shell species and too hard for the design nature knows as the soft shell. It takes an expert to know which is which. It was stated to us that buckrams are no good for the market, and are fed to the hogs or thrown back into their native element. As we watched an old timer counting his catch monotonously, one, two, three, four, five, six, etc we noticed that he held one of his hindermost fins or legs against the light. To show us how one can tell when a crab is ready to shed he pinched the flat bluish part of the fin between his fingers and at once we saw it change color. First it starts with a white rim, then it turns to pink and then to a reddish color. A wrinkle in the claws is also one of the signs. A "rank peeler" is the designation given to the kind that tells very plainly by the coloring of the fin whether it will shed or not. We confess that it is all Greek to us, but we know that a nicely fried soft crab is food which angels would covet.

In looking over this story we notice we have not lived up to our caption. But we offer no apology, for a little journey to Deep Creek is a little journey to crabland. The crab is king at Deep Creek! The neat homes, the beautiful water front, the white painted boats, the purring of motors, the towering sails and the packing houses surrounded by floats filled with crabs in the various stages of growth interested us mightily. But we were especially interested in the healthy specimen of manhood with tanned faces, wide open eyes and hospitable manners, who grace Deep Creek. One cannot but feel that here one meets direct descendants of the old English stock that migrated to Eastern Virginia in the long ago. Of these the Eastern Shore is justly proud.