Killin Me Softly

I love crabs. I could sit for hours on my deck with a cooler full of Coronas and just break crabs all up with my teeth (those little wooden mallets are for suckas!) and enjoy the sweet juicy meat inside. When I was little, it was a summer time ritual to eat crabs wrapped in newspaper on one of the apartment buildings stoops. All the kids in the neighborhood (about 13 of us) would pool our money and get as many crabs as we could from the neighborhood bar on Thursdays. Crabs then cost $0.50 each.

Lately I've been reading articles and catching news reports about the decline in the crab population along the Chesapeake Bay. I have learned, since moving to the DC area, that the Bay itself is in danger due to the increase in pollution to the Bay, mainly agricultural pollution.

Delaware and Maryland have always been great places for farming communities. However over the past 40 years there has been increase in large production farms. Not your "Mom and Pop" farms where you can go get some milk and ice cream (like Broom's in Bel Air, MD) but your big assed farms like Purdue and Morningstar Farms. These place have hundreds of thousands of animals (chickens and cows) and all of them need to shit, and need to have grain and corn to eat (which are treated with pesticides and other chemicals). These chemicals and shit unfortunately end up in the bay when heavy rains come and washes them away into streams or when they are mismanaged and seep down into groundwater below the farms.

I know what you thinking, "WTF does this have to do with crabs?!". It's simple, polluted water= warmer waters= less crabs being produced. Just like people, crabs have to have the right environment to reproduce and the Bay right now is not the right environment.

People in the crab industry thought this was part of the crabs cycle. Crab populations decline sometimes but they usually come back within a couple years. The decline we are in now started in the early 1990's and has contributed to a 65% drop in crab production! Right now, they say there are about 43.5 million pounds of crabs available Bay wide. You know how big the Bay is?! It stretches over 6 States!!!

I see bumper stickers all the time that say "Save the Bay!". They even have the Save the Bay Maryland License Plate , where proceeds from the purchase of the plate goes towards saving the Bay.

But folks, even if you can't relate to saving the Bay, we can all relate to saving some crabs!!! Damn I'm hungry........

Brown Tip

WIPE ME DOWN!!!

Stop washing your car in your drive way! Since most of us live along the Bay (yes the Potomac leads to the Bay so it's the same thing) when we wash our cars outside the pollution from your dirty cars and it's oil goes down the sewer to.... the Bay! Taking your car to the car wash can save water and reduce pollution runoff to the bay since most car wash places (not the shady ones) have storage tanks under the facility for wash water.

I just could not resist

Last Sunday I bought an SUV. Not the Lexus RX 330 that I talked though. I bought a Ford Edge, which is a wonderful piece of SUV. It has all these bells and whistles like a panoramic roof, fake leather seats, sirus radio, and sync technology. I totally enjoy driving the truck and it has already been used to DJ an impromptu party.

I have driven the car much more than I would usually drive just to get used to it. I drove it to work (something I never do since it cost $20 to park downtown), I visited a couple extra friends to floss a bit, I even drove to Rockville during rush hour to meet up with Bonna (something else I usually would not do since people on the beltway lose all common sense during the 3pm-6:30pm hour).

But all this joy riding comes at a price. I have only had the truck a week and already spent $60 to fill it up. This gas experience helps me to better understand the "pain at the pump" some people deal with everyday, like those who commute long distances or who have lots of kids to shuttle around. I'm pretty blessed that I can afford to fill up for $60, but trust and believe this will not be a weekly occurrence. So if you haven't seen the car and want a glimpse, you'll have to stop by the Hopkins House or see me at the Landover metro station.

And since I am a brown thumb I did manage to get the Edge model which meets the California Emissions Standards, which are stricter emissions requirements than the federal government (EPA) requires.


In other news......

My bad for not posting last week, seeing that I was being anything but an environmentalist at the time I should have been blogging.

Brown Tip:

Put your trash in the trash can or it will end up on your plate!

I don't think people really know where their improperly disposed street trash ends up. Well, FYI, the trash from the street here in the DC metro area ends up in the Potomac River. Yeah that may not seem like a big deal since none of us will be taking a refreshing dip in the river, but when your drinking water also comes from the Potomac River, I highly doubt you'd like to see a cigarette butt in your glass.