Years ago we used to rent a vacation house on Cape Cod along Herring Pond in Eastham. In those years we mostly confined our activities to the Outer Cape, rarely venturing further south than the Stop & Shop in Orleans. But while getting my haircut one morning, a barber suggested I take my boys crabbing at a pond in Orleans. He explained how to catch the crabs using chicken wings, twine and a net, and suggested I make the visit at dusk when the crabs would be feeding.
My boys were young at the time - no more than nine or ten - and the talked with their cousins all day about our plan to go crabbing that night. There was so much excitement that I began to worry the event might be a bust if we didn't get at least one bite. But as dusk was falling, my brother Dave and I drove to Orleans with a van filled with cousins. We walked out on the dock, and cut lengths of twine to attach to our raw chicken wings. Within seconds of lowering the wings to the bottom of the pond, my boys were pulling up blue crabs. They learned quickly that the crabs would let go once they saw the surface approaching, and so adapted to having a second person gently put a net underneath the crabs before they let go.
Over the next couple hours we had a great time catching and releasing our crabs. We probably caught 40 crabs (or maybe just one crab 40 times). The cousins competed to catch the biggest crab, and everyone busied themselves to support anyone who shouted: “I got one!”. As the evening wore on, the boys’ older cousin Dylan pulled up what has forever been known as Crabzilla. It was a giant spider crab that was so large he couldn’t fit in our net. He stared at us menacingly as he neared the surface before letting go, never to be seen again. In the years since, the size of Crabzilla has increased with each retelling of the story, so that the only hope for Orleans should he reappear is with the help of Crab-mothra or Crab-rodan.
After my boys were all grown up and we bought our home in Orleans, we decided to try to find that pond. To our delight, we were able to locate it just two miles from our house. So one evening, as the sun was setting during family vacation, my then grown boys, their cousins and their two year old second cousin went down River Road for some old time fun: crabbing on Meeting House Pond.
No, Crabzilla didn't make an appearance. 😉