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‘The crab[s] were trying to make a break for the sea,’ says man hired to wrangle them
Villagers wrangled 15,000 scuttling crabs from the side of a highway in County Donegal, Ireland, and deposited them in sandbags and metal bins. (Odhran McLaughlin/McLaughlin’s Car Dismantlers and Recovery)
Odhran McLaughlin learned the hard way that it takes a village to wrangle 15,000 scuttling crabs off the side of a highway in the dead of night.
McLaughlin is the owner of McLaughlin’s Car Dismantlers and Recovery in Burnfoot, Ireland. When he got a call Monday about an overturned transport truck on a highway in County Donegal, he thought it was just a normal day at work.
“They never told me it was full of live crab in the back,” he told As It Happens guest host Dave Seglins. “I was shell-shocked.”
According to the Donegal Daily, the truck was bound for Portugal with $97,000 worth of brown crab caught by Irish fishermen, when it careened off the road.
The driver was unharmed, but the aluminum container full of crabs burst open, and the critters made a run for it.
By the time McLaughlin arrived on the scene, they were scuttling all over the highway and the adjacent field, just 50 metres from the sea.
“The crab[s] were trying to make a break for the sea,” he said. “Like, they were trying to get back into where they come out of.”
The truck, which veered off the road in County Donegal, Ireland, was transporting live crabs from Ireland to Portugal. (Odhran McLaughlin/McLaughlin’s Car Dismantlers and Recovery )
McLaughlin’s expertise lies in car parts, not crustaceans, so he headed to the nearby villages of Burnfoot, Greencastle and Moville, where he enlisted the help of crab fishermen, a veterinarian and an army of volunteers.
He says it took 80 men, women and children roughly 18 hours to pluck the scampering shellfish from the field in the dead of night, gather them into sandbags, then lift them with a crane back into their container.
“Everybody from the village came in to help,” he said. “I don’t think it’ll ever be forgotten.”
In the end, he says they recovered 95 per cent of the crabs. Some, he says, didn’t survive the crash, while a lucky few made it to freedom.
McLaughlin says he was told the crabs they collected were originally bound for restaurants, but will instead be disposed of as they’re not fit for human consumption after their misadventure.
It’s not clear what caused the mishap to begin with, but McLaughlin has his suspicions.
“It’s these big European drivers coming over,” he said. “These boys are used to motorways and highways and stuff like that. They’re not used to the wee rural roads of Donegal.”
As for McLaughlin, he says if he never sees another crab again, it’ll be too soon.
Original:https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/15000-crabs-9.7049117
