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As it happens5:25 15,000 crabs escaped from an overturned truck in Ireland
Odhran McLaughlin learned the hard way that it takes a village to wrestle 15,000 crabs off the side of the highway at night.
McLaughlin is the owner of McLaughlin Car Dismantlers and Restoration in Burnfoot, Ireland. When he got the call on Monday about an overturned van on a County Donegal highway, he thought it was a normal day at work.
“They never told me it was full of live crabs later,” he told me. As it happens Guest host Dave Seglins. “I was shocked.”
Donegal Daily reportedThe car traveled to Portugal with $97,000 wA brown crab caught by an Irish fisherman, orth.
The driver was unharmed, but the aluminum-filled crab exploded, and the miscreants fled.
When McLaughlin arrived on the scene, they were scraping all over the highway and a nearby field about 50 meters from the beach.
“The crab(s) were trying to make a break for the sea,” he said. They were just trying to get back to where they came out.
McLaughlin’s expertise was in car parts, not crustaceans, so he headed to the nearby villages of Burnfoot, Greencastle and Moville, where he enlisted the help of crab fishermen, a vet and an army of volunteers.
It took 80 men, women and children 18 hours to pluck shellfish from the fields at night, collect them in sandbags, and then return them to their containers by crane.
“All the villagers came to help,” he said. I don’t think it will ever be forgotten.
In the end, he said they recovered 95 percent of the crab. Some did not survive the disaster, he said, but a few were lucky enough to make it to freedom.
McLaughlin said the crabs he collected were originally meant to be kept for restaurants, but instead were discarded after being injured and unfit for human consumption.
It’s not clear what prompted the betrayal to begin, but McLaughlin has his suspicions.
“These are the big European drivers that are coming,” he said. “These kids are used to motorways and motorways and things like that. They’re not used to the country roads of Donegal.”
As for McLaughlin, if he never sees another crab again, it will be too soon.