Curious crayfish!

I was profoundly confused.

In the summer along our country road, I sometimes find roadkilled crayfish. And that’s just what befuddled me for a while. Just why?—and how?—and what?—were they doing out of the water?

About the only explanation I could conjure up is that they must’ve been dropped by a marauding raccoon, and subsequently run over. But that many? Raccoons aren’t known to be that inept!

And so I pondered until one warm summer eve while I was working in my garage, when in walks a crayfish, big as you please! (Well, it was only life-size, really, at about six inches.)

Now crayfish are very common in the streams around here, but definitely not on the land, and especially not strolling up my driveway, some 75 feet from the creek. Their usual haunts are under submerged rocks or logs. But creeping its way northward with its four pairs of walking legs, this particular aquatic beast seemed perfectly at home on the concrete floor of my garage, despite the fact that its special set of legs to bail water over its gills had nothing at all to do!

As Alice cried on the other side of the looking glass: “Curiouser and curiouser!”

I wound up calling an astacologist (one who studies crayfish) at Penn State University to confirm that I wasn’t just making this up—and that it really does happen. Crayfish sometimes do leave the water to migrate, he confirmed. Why, he added, no one has a clue!