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Category Archives: ponderings

Coconut crabs

Have you ever heard of coconut crabs?  The first time I saw/heard of one, I thought it was a joke.  Because…srsly?

Coconut crab. . .

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Look at that!  The thing is about the same size as the trash can!  And no, as far as I can tell, it’s not a tiny trash can.

So anyway, coconut crabs are a species of hermit crabs are are the largest of the terrestrial arthropods.  They grow up to about 16 in with a leg span of about 3 ft.  Three feet!  That’s about the same length as Yaris!  It’s a Yaris-sized crab!  (Ok, I know it’s only the leg span but still.)

They aren’t as heavy as Yaris though.  Yaris is now at a svelte 55ish lbs.  A coconut crab with the dimensions described above would probably be about 9 lbs.  Can you imagine a 9 lb crab on your plate for dinner?  It wouldn’t even be a plate.  It would have to be a platter.  A platter holding a single crab.  And you have to eat it all.  Gosh, why are you such a piggy?

But anyway, you probably won’t find any here (by which I mean the continental US).  Coconut crabs are found on coasts in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but not all the way out to the continental States.  It’s sad that they also don’t exist in wherever my Animal Crossing town is.  Actually, coconut crabs only made it into one game, I think.  I guess I won’t get to see one of these things up close any time soon.

It’s really all just fungus

Just recently, I observed a lot of people wildly clamoring around a box of peaches. They were peaches from one of our peach trees. Everyone really wanted to get some peaches even though the peaches weren’t that great. The peaches from the tree that produces a lot of mediocre fruit. You could easily get the same quality fruit or better from a store. But no, all these people REALLY wanted some of these peaches that came off our tree. They would even promote the fact that these peaches came off of a tree. Because…peaches don’t normally come off a tree.

That got me thinking. Maybe they really want these peaches they know came off a tree because the peaches you buy in stores…are really funguseseseses? Actually, that would make sense. People want real fruit, not the weird, fake, fungus stuff that they sell in stores. You know how we have this whole industrialized food market, right? It’s all about delivering the prettiest and sturdiest product as cheaply as possible.

Well, growing fungus is pretty cheap. And fairly fast. And…I guess some fungus is pretty. Of course, these are all very specialized funguseseseses to grow to look like a real peach or whatnot.

This is probably the same with how people used to clamor for eggs from our chickens. They didn’t want to eat any more fungus eggs. They wanted real eggs from real chickens. That’s why they were so interested in getting eggs from us.

Store bought peaches and eggs were probably just harvested straight from the boxes they were grown in. You know how peaches often come in crates? They probably have peach fungus spores in there and they just dampen the crate and put it in a warm place and tada! “Peaches”! Same with eggs. They grow them straight in the cartons.

I totally think I’m on to something. I don’t know why I bought into the propaganda for so long.