Kitchens in nearly any house can be a hotbed of family activity, and ours was no different.
I remember coming home from one of those crabbing voyages with several bushel baskets of blue crabs, and when we walked in that evening, my mom was ready with the pot on the stove and the table laid out with newspaper.
We were all watching and gabbing (all eight of us in that kitchen) when a crab my mother was transferring with tongs broke free, dropped to the floor, and my mother, wearing open toed sandals, took the lateral spike on the crab’s shell right in her big toe, and deep, too.
She began swearing and hopping around, the crab scuttled sideways along the wall, the dog began chasing it, barking and snapping at it, while everyone ran around in the brightly lit kitchen trying to corral it all at once!
It was an absolute zoo of pandemonium!
Eventually, the crab was cornered and dropped into the pot, and we ate dinner.
My mom got a badly infected toe from that crab shell puncture on her toe.
Wow! That isn’t the first time I’ve heard of someone getting a serious infection from one. Sounds incredibly painful too. She sounds like a trooper.