Mystery Solved

This morning my Dad encouraged me to do a bit of research on blue crayfish. What I discovered makes yesterday's finding less mysterious, but interesting none the less.

Check this out:



The habitat of C. monongalensis is wooded hillsides, hill tops and seeps, and this is the general area they live in.



(Information found here .)

Here's another interesting tidbit from the PA Crayfish Reference : "Some crayfishes are burrowers and live far from surface water. They must have underground water though, like a shallow aquifer, underground spring, or nearby water. Burrows can be quite deep with many branching tunnels, some leading to nearby water. If you live in the right places (Southwestern and Eastern PA), you might see crayfishes walking around a garden far from water during the humid summer nights."

So...not a true mystery, just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

By the way, I also identified him as a male! We will probably release him near our spring later today, but he does seem to enjoy the mealworms we have been watching as a Science project.