I dedicate this book to the crab that got away.

      It was our second week in Ocho Rios, Jamaica the year was 2010 after exploring all of my dads favorite places.That just wasn’t enough for me, everything we were doing was definitely an adrenaline rush but it still wasn’t enough. 

It was a Wednesday after noon at pearly beach with my dad, sister, and Aunt. Each beach I had visited had a lot of sand holes which were obviously crabs holes. Each crab pit was about the size of a softball and the depth of each hole was roughly two feet deep. I have no clue what made me decide to dig in that specific hole I chose but I did. I was digging for 30 minutes and I know that because I timed myself. 

The hand digging process was absolutely exhausting in that humid heat, I was also in the ocean swimming before I started digging. I knew I was getting closer because the deeper I got the more moist the sand was getting until finally I saw a claw. Once I saw that claw it was blur,it was like some super digging boost came over me and sooner than I knew it he was in my hands.

 My sister was so freaked out and my aunt was hysterical,I told my dad to find something to put it in...he got a regular plastic water bottle and cut a vertical slit on the side of it. I wasn’t going to be  ungrateful so I made due with what I had and stuffed him in there it was exactly his size he just didn’t have a lot of room to walk, but he could move his claws up and down. 

It’s evening now 6:30 and we decide to pack up the swim stuff after all the excitement and drive back to my grandpas house. I leave the crab in the car while we eat dinner and talk for 3 hours. We walk out of my grandpas house at nine something and my dad is talking to my grandpa on the porch while my sister, aunt, and I are in the car waiting for him. The car was a 1998 Honda Accord champagne colored. 

My aunt is in the backseat with me and my sister is in the front passenger seat, my sister asked me to check on the crab. Therefore I pull the water bottle from underneath her seat and look for the crab but I don’t see it. It’s okay I’m not nervous yet because I figured he would be under the seat, but he wasn't.

So I calmly say with a little giggle “he’s not here” my sister responses “what do you mean not here? Like dead not here? Or not in the bottle not here?” Before I could even finish saying “not in the bottle” my aunt and sister zoomed out the car to the porch. I ran too but after they were already out the car, I wasn’t scared but when black people run...

My sister is holding my dad out of breath babbling “th-th-the crab is lost in the car!” My aunt is laughing pulling the “I told you so” card. My grandpa gives us a Scrooge candle like the one from “Disney’s a Christmas Carol” to search in the car because the interior lights didn’t work. The candle was roughly seven inches my dad searched the car until the candle was about two 

inches. He didn’t find anything within those twenty-five minutes of searching so we chalked it up to he escaped, sugar coating to the max most definitely.