The hometown town is surrounded by rivers and seas, and the Haihe River is connected, and several major wooden sluice gates are separated by heavy rainstorms for flood drainage.
If you hike about five or six miles, go to the mouth of the Three Rivers, and then cross the sea by boat, you will see a continuous beach and a meandering seawall, which can lead directly to the "beyond the boundary" sea. There, when the tide recedes, a large group of red-footed crabs gather on the beach, live and dazzling, making people, especially children, itch their eyes and hands!
This red-footed crab, with its large claws, was large and shiny, could be hunted and dug in self-defense, quite two hands. There is an old saying in my hometown: "The claws of a red-footed crab are bigger than their bodies." "Perhaps the most brief summary of the image and value of this type of crab?" This object is not dabbled by real fishermen, so the family is particularly prosperous.
This red-footed crab, at first glance a little stunned, that big claw is also in vain, not like the sea crab, so well-proportioned, sharp and fierce, once "bitten" by the "sting", such as pliers like scissors, very good, fall can not fall, break can not open, do not let you leave marks and break, hurt the flesh can not! This red-footed crab does not use "teeth and claws" to get away, but relies on "walking as a plan" to get out, as long as the situation is not good, they absolutely turn around and flee, see what you do?
Fishing for fish, shrimp and snail crabs depends on skill. According to various aquatic habits, different means of tools are used: hook fishing, casting nets, touching with hands, digging with pickaxes...
My grandmother's house was by the sea, and my mother begged for a small sea when she was a child. When I was a child, my mother was more than 30 years old, and she also invited her neighbors to go to this area to beg for the small sea, although there was also a lack of special sea fishing gear, she could still pick up small catches every time, she divided those fish, shrimp, snails, mussels, etc., or pickled or boiled, and there was also a bowl and a half bowl.
The old home is hilly and gardened, and there are also freshwater hairy crabs in the clear river in front of the village. This hairy crab square flat brown, thin shell taste, to autumn and winter the fattest, the mother crab is more on, its golden cream, is the best wine, and rich in protein, pure natural hair crab per kilogram price has been as high as 100 yuan, but very rare. In the 1980s, the town's farmers' market still had bunches of grass bales of natural hairy crabs, but for 20 years, it could not withstand such indiscriminate fishing and indiscriminate use, and the "mat" rolled "wind" line, and now it is almost extinct. Even those sea-grown red crabs, which are more vigorous and fierce, are almost doomed. In the past, in the evening of summer afternoon, the streets of this town simply became the "second" of agricultural and aquatic products, that seafood crabs, snails, shrimp, fish, loach, eels, etc., planted in large quantities, full of baskets. At one point, customers were rushing and crowded, often blocking the passing vehicles. Nowadays, even the so-called natural red crabs, including impostors and foreigners, are few and far between.
Although the red-footed crab lacks "economic value", in the minds of children, it is purely a natural landscape and local customs, which is enough to affect them for a lifetime and a half, and they will never forget it. How long will this simple and innocent childhood fun and childlike heart continue?