More Buck Fever

This is a very short story to demonstrate that I am not the only one in this family who gets buck fever. I am thinking particularly of one dive, probably in 1973 or 74. It was a beautiful day with warm, clear water and soft trade winds. Actually, a rather typical day on Guam. Joanne and I were diving on a reef dotted with larger coral heads. Suddenly she found a lobster peeking at her from a deep hole in a dead coral head.

She dropped her spear and grabbed the lobster’s antennae with both hands. Forget the sugar plum fairies. Visions of lobster with garlic butter danced in her head. She tugged on the antennae, but the lobster refused to cooperate. Instead, he dug in and would not be prized loose. And there Joanne sat a few feet under water, unable to let go of the antennae to get her spear gun because the lobster would simply disappear. She reminded me forcibly of the possibly apocryphal tale of the monkey with his hand inside a jar clutching a banana. But it would have taken some time for the monkey to starve. It wouldn’t have taken Joanne very long at all to run out of air

Joanne tugged on the lobster for ten minutes before it finally occurred to her that she wasn’t going to win. She might break the animal’s antennae off, which would damage him greatly, and she still wouldn’t get lobster tail for desert. Two antennae would look pathetic on the dinner plate.

It was buck fever all over again. But at least we didn’t hurt ourselves or each other.