Of zarigani and tadpoles.....

Yesterday we decided to have a quiet day together instead of rushing around like we have been doing the last few weekends. Now the rainy season is upon us it is time to go on a search for zarigani (which I think are fresh water crayfish in English). So, how does one catch a zarigani? First you need good hunting ground, so we went down to the lotus flower farm, it is the first time we have been, but we were welcomed by the staff and shown where to go to catch the wee beasties. What you need is a piece of string, some dried squid (found with the other beer snacks in the conbini), a net and a box. Tie your squid to the string then throw it in the water, wait until you feel a tug then gentle lift the string out and hopefully the zarigani will be hanging on.

 This is daddy-zani, he was the biggest one that we caught and he wasn't going to let go of that squid without a fight. 

 Then we tried to catch some tadpoles, the boys were rubbish at it

but I managed to catch one and he is a biggie too.

 Once we had caught about 10 zarigani we had a walk around the farm, it is a bit early for the lotus flowers and you need to be there at the crack of dawn to see them when they are open. Maybe we will pop down there again early one morning.

The farm don't really want the tadpoles and zarigani because they eat the plants so they welcome you to take them away, we also found this little chap.

 When we got home we had to decide what to do with them all, it took a lot of squealing and jumping before Ebi-kun managed to pick one up but he was determined.

We put some in a big tank and Ebi-kun decided he wanted to study them and went to get his sketch pad, a rather lovely sketch pad which were received all the way from Luxembourg when I did a swap with Katy. Ebi-kun has decided that this is his nature sketch book. He is funny when he concentrates, he sticks his tongue out of the side of his mouth and we are not allowed to talk because it distracts him!

 Here is the zarigani he drew, all the legs present and correct!

We had 10 zarigani, 2 tadpoles, 1 shellfish and a small fish.

We decided to keep daddy-zari, the tadpoles and fish, 4 smaller zarigani went into Ebi-kuns yochien bug box and he has taken them to yochien today then the ones that were left we took down to the park and released. I was expecting the fish to be belly up this morning since it managed to jump out of the bowl three times before we managed to get the big tank set up.