- by Owen Morton
“What is the answer to this question?” – Peter McDonald
“Crabs.” – Owen Morton
- May 2001
The above exchange between two dear friends when they were revising for their A-levels perhaps best illustrates the versatility of the word ‘crabs’ in answering everything. (The above exchange was made because the two dear friends in question were extremely bored with revising in general and revising Psychology in particular, so they resorted to detailing all the questions they’d really like to see on the exam papers. They were sadly, if not altogether surprisingly, disappointed.) And today, nearly two and a half years after that heartfelt exchange was made, I have come to realise that, more than anything else, I want to be a crab.
Why? you cry. Or at least I hope you do. If it has come to the point whereby you accept without question that it is in fact intelligent for me to wish to be a crab, then it has probably also come to the point whereby it is time for me to stop living. However, if you do cry Why?, as it is my fervent hope that you do, then do not despair, for I can explain myself quite sufficiently. Or at least I believe I can. Quite probably I can’t, actually, and then when this becomes abundantly clear, I will reveal that I am, in fact, utterly and irremediably mental, and then I don’t know what’ll happen, though I’m sure it will involve liberal quantities of straitjackets and rooms with rubber walls, and will doubtless be to my intense displeasure.
So, in the interests of not becoming committed to sixteen years’ hard labour in Britain’s finest establishment for the mentally challenged, I will now explain myself as regards my reasons for wishing to be a crab.
First of all, there’s the claws. Crabs have really good claws. Some might say that other animals have claws too, and they might suggest cats and rabbits for this. They might suggest pelicans as well, but if they did, they’d be wrong. But crabs definitely have better claws than cats and rabbits, and pelicans, don’t they? I mean, let’s just think about it. A cat’s claw: what can you do with that? If you had cat claws which extended from your fingers, you could scratch people, admittedly, and maybe you could climb trees, but a crab can do all that and still have enough claw power left in its other claw to hold a full length dressing mirror, if it wanted to. And that’s another thing. If you had cat or rabbit claws, you couldn’t hold things. But you can hold things in crab claws. Plus, of course, if you’re a cat or rabbit, you can have your claws trimmed. If you’re a crab, your claws will never be trimmed because you’re too damn intelligent to let anyone with a claw trimming machine come anywhere near you.
With regard to the claws, some people might say that they’re more like pincers, and that lobsters have better ones. This is entirely not true. Okay, it is purely a matter of interpretation as to whether you want to call them claws or pincers, though my money is on claws, but to say that lobster pincers are better is a case of unprovoked slander. It is a well-known and thankfully true fact that size is not everything. Yes, lobster pincers are bigger than crab claws, but really, have you ever seen a lobster try to move? They’re bloody slow, because they’re dragging those oversized pincers round with them. It’s akin to you putting on concrete gloves and trying to crawl around as quickly as you normally do. Not that you do normally crawl around. Well, I don’t know. I suppose you might. I’m assuming you don’t, but we all know the dangers of assuming. And just think about it: if lobster pincers are too big for you when you’re a lobster, you really wouldn’t want them if you were a crab, now would you?
And so to my second reason why it would be so cool to be a crab. Crabs walk sideways. I suppose some stupid people might point out that they can walk both forwards, backwards, and sideways, but this merely suggests to me that yes, they may do all these things, but they do none of them very well. Crabs, on the other hand, only walk sideways, but they do so with a grace and style which is unequalled anywhere else in the natural kingdom. Or indeed in the unnatural kingdom. Actually, I wouldn’t know about the latter because I’ve never been to the unnatural kingdom. Although, on the other hand, I suppose it could be argued that I’m in it now, because, looking around me, I can’t see anything that could possibly exist in nature, except if freak wind and rain conditions managed to erode a block of wood into the beautiful wooden crocodile on the floor next to me. I suppose that’s possible, but it’s not very likely. At all. But back to crabs.
Next, crabs live at the beach. Wouldn’t you like to live at the beach? I certainly would. If I was a crab, I’d go swimming every day and do a bit of bodyboarding, and then laze about in the sunshine and get a beautiful tan. Obviously, I’d live on a beach which has a nice warm climate all year round, because there’s nothing worse than a beach where it just tips it down all the time. I mean, you expect to get wet when you’re at a beach, but you really don’t want to be rained on. That just takes all the fun out of it. Plus, crabs don’t burn, unless you’re deliberately trying to burn one (in which case, shame on you), so sunburn wouldn’t be an issue. This is another advantage that crabs have over cats and rabbits. I remember once my cat Vicky was in danger of being burnt when she went outside, so we put suntan lotion on her ears and nose. Or at least, we thought we did. What we actually did was put self-tanning lotion on her, so as it happened, she still burnt, as well as having quite marvellously neon orange ears and nose. That sort of embarrassment would never happen to a crab, because even if someone tried to put self-tanning lotion on you, you could teach them a lesson with those marvellous claws of yours.
And if you were a crab, you could eat Sunday dinner every day of the week if you wanted to, because there’d be no one who could stop you.
Having said all that, I think there’s no particular reason why anyone would not want to be a crab. The next step is, of course, trying to work out how to become one. This probably isn’t as hard as you might at first think. Crabs are a very open species, and so you could put yourself up for adoption and be adopted by a crab couple. Or better yet, you can become a crab by marriage. If all else fails, there really is nothing to stop you from dressing up as a crab and pretending to be one in all given situations. So long as no one sees you taking your crab costume off, chances are no one will ever suspect you aren’t really one.
So get crabbing!