Crayfish rescue

There was a gasoline spill into the bigger creek here; Thornton. I’m told it was probably 100 gallons of gas. Seattle fire responded quickly to stop more from getting in the creek and the hazmat folks got some chemical sucking baffles onto the creek quickly. Supposedly no gas made it past them as far as our house. Good on them if true.

I went looking the next day to see if I could find any fish or if the banks were going to be lined with shiny dead white bellies. I was happily surprised to see a 3" parr right away but fewer fish than are normally around. I guess we won’t know for another year or two when the trout return is normal or not. Trout do seem to be able to thrive in pretty putrid water.

I went up to take pictures of the baffles and Julie noticed a rather large crayfish out of the water. They do get out of the water to do things and sometimes even burrow but not usually out in the daylight like that. So we figured he was trying to escape from the tainted water. Arthropods of all leg counts tend to have rather tipsy biology when it comes to being poisoned. I try to tell that to the a-holes who run their freshly flea-dipped mongrels through there.

Below you can see the proper technique for picking these guys up. Right behind the shoulders or else they will reach around and pinch. He had no trouble pulling up a nearby weed in his claw when I picked him up.

This one was really quite large and lively. My hand makes it look small. I always forget how big I am till I see myself in pictures with familiar objects.

It was a simple idea to move him over to the other, smaller, creek 100 feet away. They merge another hundred feet down so it’s basically the same water as far as he was concerned but the other creek was not involved in the spill.

Here he is, moved from Thornton (or Maple Leaf depending upon which map you read) to Willow creek. I hope I did him a favor and didn’t just serve him up to the raccoons because a crayfish his size might not be able to hide as well in Willow.