Crustacean crime

So, the WSJ reports that crayfish rustlin’ is big business across many states (& Oz), both farmed & in the wild.

Now, this is interesting because it’s kind of unexpected to those of us who only encounter crayfish in a bouillabaisse along with a rather nouveau Beaujolais. I mean—I didn’t even know crawdads were big business, much less major crime. (I also wonder where you fence hot mudbugs?)

But the interestingness doesn’t stop with Astacidae. Drift on down the story & see where, “Maine lobstermen and Alaska crabbers have been said to shoot at people who pull up their pots. In June, a San Diego Superior Court judge handed down a 90-day jail sentence to a man who was found smuggling contraband lobsters in his pants.”

Well, damn—now, that’s what I call a crime story.

Seems that, just before lobster season commenced last October, Binh Quang Chau, 33, was apprehended by San Diego Fish & Wildlife wardens with six lobsters stuffed down his pants. Chau, a serial poacher, caught the wardens’ attention when they spotted “odd bulges” in his trousers.

(Obviously, Chau wasn’t wearing the skintight jeans you see around West Hollywood, where you can see whether the wearer has a penny or a dime in his back pocket.)

I was somewhat relieved to find that the critters were wrapped individually in newspaper before filling his pants. (Hey—keep that in mind when you’re reading your news online: if you ever want to smuggle contraband crustaceans in your attire, you can’t do that with electrons.) Even so, I wonder if PETA is getting on his ass—that has to be lobster abuse.

Chau got 90 days in the clink—this wasn’t his first offense, after all. & the story goes on to recount lobster thievery on a grand scale--& that’s just in La Jolla.

Well, this story reminded me of something I’d seen in one of those emails some time ago—a pet shop thief trying to hide stolen snakes in his (you guessed it) trousers. So I went on a Bing & found one story about a guy making off with a python crammed into his jeans from a Florida pet shop.

But pants-related purloining is not limited to the Serpentes suborder of Reptilia, or even to the male of the homo sapiens crowd:

A suburban Houston pet shop caught a thief on surveillance video jamming a tortoise in the pocket of his jeans & absconding.

& then there’s the woman who went into a Lansing, Mich., pet shop, cased the joint & then stuffed a young boa constrictor down her trousers.

& that’s only the first page of the search results.

I guess desperate times do call for desperate measures. & baggy trousers.