Running With Scissors

Animal Idioms and Other Non-Sequitur

In Latin America, when someone is caught daydreaming, they're often said to be thinking about the immortality of the crab. Not that they're actually immortal, mind you. Their lifespan is somewhere around 30 years, if undisturbed by humans. Of course, most don't live past a few months, because, aside from being decidedly not immortal, they're cursed with being delicious with butter sauce.

This idiom actually comes from an episode in Greek mythology, when it is said that Zeus had a conversation with a crab that told him that they were immortal because they walked sideways instead of forwards, thus cheating time.

To recap: Crabs—not immortal, awfully delicious, and have, at best, a naive understanding of how time actually works. At worst, they're compulsive idiots.

Thanks to these three particular qualities, they have become a culinary staple of port cities all around America. Boston, in particular, has thrived from the crabs industry, with one of its restaurants, The Barking Crab, one of the best in America.

Crabs, as far as we know, do not actually bark. Feel free to add it to the already established crab facts on our list.

You can see how a person can lose their train of thought with crab-related trivia, and how Spanish speakers created such an interesting idiom to signify daydreaming. We are doing it right now, for example.

Speaking of trains, did you know that crabs, and their lobster cousin, were actually prison food before the industrial revolution? Since they were everywhere in port cites and were treated like vermin, they became like some kind of cheap sea fodder for inmates.

It wasn't until the industrial revolution that trains were available to transport goods between ports and Middle America, popularizing seafood in otherwise inaccessible places. Crab became popular in the upper class, and the rest is history. Delicious, delicious history.

Some people are allergic to them, like Peter Katz, and their thoughts are often occupied not by the immortality of the crab, but by how mortal they can be if they were to ingest them.

Still, Peter Katz's mind was occupied by the immortality of the crab. Not the actual immortality of the crab of course, but by a book of the same name by Dominican poet Edgar Smith.

Said book was left at Dr. George's lobby by a previous patient long ago and had since remained there as an alternative to the numerous outdated magazines that sat on the coffee table. Peter had picked that book as he waited for Dr. George to receive him and had found the main character to be quite to his liking.

In "The Immortality of the Crab," the main character is tired of everyday life and decides that he would rather not live anymore. He tries to commit suicide three times, failing each and every attempt, making him wonder if, like crabs, he was immortal. A real page turner it was.

Except, again, crabs are not immortal. That didn't stop Peter from daydreaming about their shared comeuppance and chastising himself for not trying to kill himself by going to the nearest Red Lobster and eating enough shellfish to become a Caribbean piñata.

He was so caught up his daydream that he didn't hear Sarah McGuffin discretely call up to him from her desk.

Peter was, generally speaking, a klutz and a spaz, who usually didn't notice the finer details around him. They have an idiom in Latin America for those kinds of people, and it roughly translates to "someone who is sold cat meat instead of rabbit meat," mainly because cat meat tastes just like rabbit.

We at "Running with Scissors" do not condone the consumption of cats. We do, however, find it delicious with some garlic and rosemary.

It wasn't until Sarah got right in his face that he snapped out of his daydream.