Offsite Pets.

One of the great dissappointments of my adult life was learning that you can't keep lobsters as pets. I always wanted a big tank like you see in resturants.
Turns out those lobsters are doomed one way or another, because they don't eat in captivity, so if they aren't eaten, they die after a month or so anyway.

This broke my little heart, because I've always dreamed of keeping a lobster or two at home.

Recently I learned that you can, however, keep crawfish in tanks.

They're cute, like mini lobsters.



So I don't know what all I'll need, and I won't go catch any until I'm sure I've got a set up that will support them, but in the meantime, I have offsite pets.

See, when I was a kid, I wanted any and every animal I saw. And while my mother was pretty lenient about letting me have most of them, sometimes she would pacify me by saying, "Yes, you can have the bear/wombat/goat, but it still has to live here in the national park/zoo/neighbor's yard."
It was actually a pretty good tactic.

There is a river here in San Diego. I used the term 'river' loosely because it's really nothing more than a creek, but it's classified on our maps as the Sweetwater River. I guess it's all relative.

I used to ride my horse out by this river as a kid, and it's still one of my favorite places to take a hike. Years ago I came across a spot where it appeared that someone was trying to build a rock bridge/dam, and I put a few rocks in myself to help it out. Since I'm no expert, it gets a bit washed out in between visits, so everytime since, I like to rebuild and repair this little rock bridge, and I suspect I'm not the only one doing this.

This little bridge/dam makes a great spot for crawfish, or crawdads as they are also know in this part of the world.

Last weekend when Nick and I visited this spot, I decided to adopt this little pool and it's crawfish as my offsite pets.