Terry Prone: There are knickers at the bottom of my garden that boomerang back

Originally published in the Irish Examiner.

You know you’re in trouble when you find yourself muttering aloud to nobody in particular that crabs can’t fly. It’s factually defensible. While some fish can give the impression of flying, crabs? Never.

Yet a sizeable crab was waddling across the grass outside my home. Now, I live about six metres above sea level, which is useful, because I’ll be good and dead before rising sea levels due to climate chaos threaten me in a personal way. It’s also helpful, in that crabs on the lawn are few and far between. Snails are bad enough.

None of which made a dent on the crab traversing the grass, whose progress was getting in the way of me salting the weeds. The crab, like me when I’m driving, was speedy and purposeful but didn’t seem to have much of a clue where it was headed.

I picked it up and it waved its claws at me in an agitated way while I descended the steps to the beach, observing a woman in those funny black boots swimmers wear, coming out of the water.

I waved at her and beckoned. She did a “Who? Me?” gesture and I nodded. Across the stones, across the sand and up the slope she obediently came. I asked her if she would do me a great favour. Would she consider taking this crab back to the ocean for me, since she was already wet and I wasn’t? I explained that I had no clue how it had got to my grass. Maybe it was the Marco Polo of the crab world? She laughed.

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