A Portrait Needn’t Be of a Person.

This is a ‘portrait’ of a Crayfish, aka: Crawfish, Crawdad or Crawdaddie, Freshwater Lobster, Mudbug, Cabbie or Procamborus Alleni.

He is an arthropod with more appendages than you can shake a stick at!

To start with the obvious, legs: he has two chilipeds which are the biggest legs with claws for catching stuff and for defense; another four legs with dinky little pincers which, like cleats on your boots, give him some grip while walking; and another four back legs which just have little pointy thingies on the end; ten in all, making him a decapod arthropod.

Further back he has four pairs of wobbly swimmerets, which look like they are on their way to becoming legs; and one pair of uropods, before you come to his fan shaped teslon; i.e., his tail.

In addition, at his head he has two little stalks called pedicules on top of which are his eyes, which move independently of one another; two sets of antennae - the smaller of which are called antennules - to feel his way around and find something to eat; and six feathery maxillipeds instead of a tongue and teeth to get his food into his mouth.

He can also crunch lunch with mandibles which, compared to our up-and-down jaws are mounted sideways in his head; and he will eat anything he can catch, making him an omnivorous decapod arthropod.

I had a good look at a crayfish not long ago while on a canoe trip but that is not what led me to this exploration of their anatomy - which required some research on YouTube.

Now, I will readily admit to being easily distracted, and I am not immune to being sucked down a rabbit hole as I browse YouTube. Few of us are.

If, for instance, you were to check out ‘Smarter Every Day’ - as I absolutely recommend you do! - and if you were to do that now, you might never return to this exposition on Crayfish.

But, if you are still with me, you need to know that this digression is not for no reason at all.

This is not just any Crayfish. This is Karl.

Karl is Owen’s pet Crayfish. At the market, to my surprise, Owen commissioned me to do a ‘portrait’ of Karl and, to draw Karl, I wanted a clearer understanding of what I was looking at. Hence the dive into YouTube to learn more about how they are put together; and where I also learned, among other things, how to cook and eat them them, and how, on a single Cajun Crawdad Farm in Louisiana they raise over three million pounds a year! (Yeah, a little time in a rabbit hole!)

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When I decided to offer doing portraits from photographs, I expected I would get lots of requests to do drawings of grandkids for doting grandparents.

It went that way for a while and then someone asked me to draw a dead dog. Well, not the dog when it was dead but a picture of the dog for a grieving dog owner as it was when still alive. So, I did my first memorial doggie portrait.

Then I got a request for a drawing of a dearly departed cat.

And then Chuck asked me to do a drawing of his daughter with an elephant! It wasn’t her pet but she had visited an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and was enthralled by their gentle presence. He had a photo of her, mud splattered and bikini-clad, leaning against an elephant’s massive head and asked if would I draw it for him. Why not!? Challenge accepted.

Such requests are a part of my growing appreciation for, and deeper understanding of, people’s connections with animals. I get it!

I suppose that felt connection is part of our recognition that we are cousins to all living things. Evolutionary biology - more particularly, molecular biology - has shown that all life forms have a common ancestor in the deep past. Astonishing but true! Darwin should no longer be controversial!

Lately I have drawn more dogs than people. I suppose that is because our connection with our canine cousins is the closest and the most wide-spread of our relationships with other animals. It goes back many thousands of years; so far that dogs have come to be known as our ‘best friends’.

We have actually co-evolved with dogs! Our behaviors have affected one another so profoundly that, over time, wolves have become, among other breeds, a host of pathetic little lap dogs

who wouldn’t last a day in their ancestors’ wild environment; and our fearless ancestral cave-dwelling hominid hunters have become a host of fawning pet-lovers who think more of little Mitzi than their own species’ spouses.

So - this is all to say I decided I would just change the signage at my market booth to say ‘Pets and Portrait Sketches’ to give pets and people equal billing.

And then, along comes Owen, with his skateboard under his arm, and says, “I see you do drawings of pets…”

Why not!? Not what I expected when I began my enterprise of offering to do portraits of people, but you never know what twists a day can bring - and those crawdads are cousins too!

And Owen loves it!