Catching Crawdads In The Creek

Our friends, the Jennings, arrived today. They live in Waterloo, Illinois and try to make it here to Grafton for a few days each year when we're here. They have two boys. When they arrive, the energy changes in the house and the activity level of all the boys increases. The boys only see each other once a year, and after just a few minutes, they pick up right where they left off the year before.

Today was no exception. All the boys headed to the creek and after a few minutes, we could hear the sounds of excited kids echoing up through the hollow. They found some crawdads and they needed a container to put them in.

My cousin, Jason, and his family were also here at the time. We laughed at their exaggerated descriptions of how big their crawdads were as they ran up the hill. This scene repeated itself many times. They kept coming until we ran out of containers large enough to hold the crawdads and made them stop. They captured more than 20 crawdads and a tiny salamander.

I can remember, with great joy, doing the exact same things at their age. If you who have never caught crawdads in a creek, you have no idea what you missed. Here's a short video of their catch today.