Shell Game

Playing Shark at Whole Foods the other day, Desmond picked out a Dungeness Crab. It wasn’t cheap ($20 bucks for the thing), so I decided to make the most of the expense, we needed not only a nice seafood snack but a bit of a crab anatomy lesson. We took it home, opened up the butcher’s paper outside on the Ikea kid’s table out on the deck and cracked the thing apart with kitchen shears. Violet didn’t think much of the meat itself and was definitely skeeved out by the tamale inside, but was fascinated by the process of dismantling and digging for meat. But Desi loved every last gory, glorious bit of it, and even asked me to position the shell so that the eyes were always looking at him.
—Hugh