Day 29: Weak Crab Knock

After brutally murdering a member of the crab family (called “Local Crab”… which I’ve certainly never chowed down on, to the best of my knowledge, at yea olde crab shacke), by my rules I’m now able to eat crab.  More on the dead itself but my first priority in my new life was how to appropriately label myself.

I have to apply a bit of the ole’ logic to what my new “Name” is.  First I was a Vegivore.  I assume Omnivore and Carnevore are easy to discern how people came up with the names.  Vegivore is from Vegitable… a common misspelling of a delicious chlorophyll-phylled treat, and carnivore comes from, of course, the latin root word Caro for flesh. So for Crab I had to go to
the Latin root of the word (which incidentally matches up with my astrological sign) of Cancer.  So I’m a Cancivore.  AKA, A cancer eater.  Sorry grandpa, if I’d been quicker I would have been able to help out a little bit more.

So how did my life as a Cancivore begin?  Well after a somewhat botched attempt at fishing I managed to murder a disastrously small crab that really wasn’t worth eating, and spearfishing had done nothing to sate the growing pain in my belly to consume animal flesh, so I was forced to turn to fresh farm raised crab instead.  After doing some investigating of the Huntington Beach Pier (and seeing a really cool looking, and probably very sick and dying Pelican)

I am a pelican!

I found several places selling live crab.  Dungeoness crab was like $15 bucks a pound, and each crab weighs anywhere from 1.5-3 pounds.  I wasn’t quite prepared to spend $45 bucks to murder a crab that I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t horrifically mess up.  So instead I shopped  around a bit more and found someone who was selling “Local Crabs” which looked big and gnarly and I therefore assumed their meat must be also bountiful and delicious.  After making my 10 dollar purchase (Yum 2 pounds of crab!) he was thrown on ice for me so he’d go into hibernation and stay alive longer so I could draw out the macabre ritual as long as possible.  Then I threw him on ice, drove Neil home and went to my own home.  The whole thing took like 2.5 hours and I was worried he was
going to be dead by the time I got him home since I certainly felt half dead and exhausted, but nevertheless I had a dead to do.  And as eager as I am to cook it up, something about cooking it after it was already dead would make me a carrionvore which isn’t really what I’m looking for yet.

I am Jack's bagfull of Crab

I pulled him out of the ice and looked him over and at first he looked rather dead, but as you can tell from the video I posted previously he woke up slightly before long.  I got my sister’s fiance’s help with some video for all of 4 seconds before the battery died, but I didn’t want to wait along and prolong the deed.  So after performing what Neil described as a “Weak Crab Knock!” where I think I just pissed him off more than actually knocking him out, I did a bit better, got him unconscious, then pried off his shell with a giant knife and cut him in half.  I then cleaned him (Which was surprisingly
easy) and cooked him up in several spoonfuls of butter and garlic and while the original recipe I was working off of called for some Pino Grigio, given the somewhat gutterpunk method of his demise I decided to go for an old bud light I found in my fridge instead (Like I have Pino Grigio in my house…)

Ok so it wasn't a Bud Light

So he steamed up nicely while he baked for 20 minutes in the oven and the finished product is below.  I really didn’t feel even the slightest tinge of morality set in when killing the crab, other than a desire to not prolong it’s death any more than I had to.  I think that’s mostly because he has an armored carapace, giant claws and is totally alien and weird looking.
I was probably equally parts hungry and scared of the thing as I was hacking away on it.  I really don’t think in the future I’d have a problem murdering another crab to give me it’s sweetmeats for consumption.

Here's the cooked and finished product

A few notes.  If you ever decide to do something along these lines (cooking a live crab) you really should watch this youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmDorauP5Ag and the followup by the same author.  It was really informative.  A few other notes… when getting knocked out my crab had one of it’s claws fall off… I’m guessing that’s a defense mechanism to try to protect the body if a predator is trying to get at the goods.  It’s kindof surprising and mildly gruesome, but something to be aware of.  Also for my crab, I REALLY should have cracked the shell ahead of time.  Since I baked it instead of boiling it the shell was REALLY hard still and it certainly wasn’t “crackable” with a fork.  This thing took a few whacks of a legit claw hammer from my garage before I was able to get at the goods. Also the meat itself was VERY stringy.  My local crab would have made an awesome crab salad, but wasn’t so much a main course in it’s practicality.  I don’t know if that’s a result of the cooking or the actual type of crab itself.  Further investigation is required.  If I actually do this again with a live crab sometime I’ll throw up a video to give people an idea of what it’s like.  It was very much a strange and new experience and I did feel connected with what I was chowing down