Last spring my blue crayfish bred, and I had a batch of baby blue crays (some of which were to be sent out to fellow MFTers). Right around shipping time I separated the larger ones out into a temporary container. It worked great, because I was able to sort out the males and females. Made for easy target feeding as well...just so long as I did daily water changes to keep the mess at a minimum.
One morning my wife had been getting ready for work (I was still sleeping).
I suddenly awoke to her shrieking voice telling the whole neighborhood "the crays escaped, the crays escaped!" Part of me went immediately into a determined 'cray retrieval mode,' but at the same time I feared getting a rolling-pin upside the head (my wife detested the thought of 'creepy crawlies' running amuck on the floor somewhere). Still, I felt it best to concentrate on finding them...
And of course I knew what had happened. Yup, you guessed it---I forgot to close the lid on their container after a water change! Luckily only 2 out of the 6 that were in there had escaped, but I still didn't look forward to breaking the news to the would-be recipients of these little blue-clawed MIAs. I moved every piece of furniture, including the fridge, the oven, laundry machines, sofa, TV stand. I even checked under the bed, in the closets...just about everywhere. The crays were nowhere to be found! I thought "oh, great...maybe the cat ate them," but I couldn't find any remains. It was quite the mystery...
One day, half a year later, my wife was once again doing something in the kitchen when I heard her shriek out in panic. I thought "oh boy, now what?!?" (but at least she hadn't woken me up this time). So I got up and went into the kitchen to see what was wrong. There my wife was standing there in front of the oven with one of the burners missing. Hehe...guess what she found under the stovetop?!
My poor baby blues had been Bar-B-Q'd!!!
BV