Vital Essence

Today Cap made an interesting observation about the shrimp we were catching. All season, when we dump shrimp out of the traps, their eyes are aglow with an orange luminescence. It looks like if you turned the lights off that they would glow in the dark (and maybe they do underwater!). Today however, Cap noticed that only roughly half of the shrimp had glowing eyes. He commented that he'd heard of this phenomenon marking the end of the season: that their eyes glow less just before they head south. There are many tales in fishing and it's difficult to know which ones are true until you witness them. Sure enough, the shrimp are losing their glow.

I jokingly replied, once I'd turned this idea over in my mind looking for a biological explanation, "Well, they say that women "glow" when they are pregnant. Maybe the shrimp lose their glow after they drop their eggs!" I drew a parallel in my mind between women giving birth and shrimp "dropping their eggs" (essentially giving birth to their eggs).

I hope my comparing women to marine crustaceans isn't an offensive thought. I've been known to do make this connection before. One can often tell when a lobster is a "seeder" or an egg-bearing female by looking at her tail alone. A wide tail means that a female has held eggs before. Of course this isn't enforced by law. By stringent regulation, the second tail flipper from the right must be notched if a fisherman sees eggs on her, thereby protecting her from being sold at the dock. But none-the-less a wide tail is a telltale indication of a seeder. In my mind, this is comparable to a woman's hips widening after she gives birth.

I make these analogies neither to demean womankind as mere "egg-bearers" nor to personify marine critters, but simply to support my belief that all forms of life have similarities. I wonder if the "glow" of a pregnant woman is a sign of a spirit, a vital essence, taking hold of a small body within her? Who's to say that shrimp don't also glow when they give life to many little eggs? Perhaps humans and shrimp aren't so far removed after all.