가재와 소풍

In English, many things living in the water are called fish; for instances, crayfish, jellyfish, cuttlefish, etc. It sounded really strange, because they don't look like fish at all! However, I managed to learn that there is a distinction between the true fish (vertebrates) and just water creatures (invertebrates 무척추동물) in the formal English. For a true fish, there is a space before the word 'Fish' (e.g., Belt Fish, Monk Fish). For other aquatic critters, there is no such space (as in crayfish). Thus, 'fish' is a general term for creatures swimming under the water. An exception that I know is the "silverfish". This is actually an insect, living on the dry land.

Similar rule applies for the flies. For example, compare House Fly vs. dragonfly. The former is a 'true fly', while the latter is an insect that happens to 'fly'. These days, however, not many people realize such a difference, and use it indistinguishably.

Anyway, my and my sister's family went to a creek with a hope to cool down this scorching summer heat. We spotted several crayfish (가재) on the rocky bed of the stream, and caught a few (one of them in the picture above). It was not easy to recognize them in the beginning, because of their camouflage. However, our patience got paid off. Kids had a lot of fun and we lost the track of time.

When I was a school kid, 소풍 was one of the most exciting events. One reason is that it is the day when we can have snacks that we cannot do in normal days. The usual places were someone's tomb (동구능, 정능), temples (봉은사, 영화사), or 유원지. On the way back home, we used to stay around, and some kids tried to catch 가재 in the stream. I tried as well, but never caught anything. So I traded my leftover snacks with 가재, put it in an empty cola bottle to bring it home and observed how it swam. After a day or so, it died of hunger or lack of oxygen or stress (or all of them) ㅠㅠ. As times passed, I forgot about this for a long time, until I found a pile of (cooked) crayfish in a Chinese restaurant. I wondered how they got so many of them.

Finally, EUREKA! I caught my own 가재, a live one!!! I was so excited. And it was such a memento of my old (happy) days. =°|°=