The meanest shrimp EVER!

When I was a teenager my family lived on an apple orchard. My dad made Bee Blocks to encourage some more pollinators to stick around. They climb into the little holes and lay their eggs and then seal it with a spit/sawdust/mud mix:

At the time, my dad was working as a mechanic/handyman at one of the local ranches. He was making some for them as well. One of his co workers came in and was asking about it. My dad explained and his co-worker replied in horror "AGH! Those bees are MEAN!" This confused my dad because this particular variety of bee was known for its docile nature. So he responded,

"Why do you think they are mean?"

"They bite! THEY BITE HARD!!"

Puzzled my dad asked, "When did this happen?"

Then with a kind of sheepish look his co-worker responded, "..Well, I was digging him out of his hole"

This story is my 'Well, I was digging him out of his hole' confession:

Saturday was another negative tide. So we were at our favorite tide pool spot. We found the usuals bristle stars, cucumbers, red eyed rock crabs, etc but new to this trip were the Sally Light Foot Crabs:

Aren't they pretty! Richard says they sold these in the pet store where he used to work.

Also we found this very cool shrimp thing:

The picture doesn't do him justice, he was the most beautiful deep emerald color you ever saw.

It kept making a popping noise against the side of the tub so I put some shells and rocks in there to calm it down. After examining every thing else we had caught, we couldn't find our cool shrimpy thing. Then we looked in the urchin shell and TADA!

We poked him out because we really wanted a good picture of him but then he qucikly swam and hid in a different rock.





Finally we got him out of there and where we could pick him up and take a good picture of him. Richard was hesitant to pick it up... "Here", I said, "I'm not a scaredy-cat I'll hold it and you can take the picture." 

AGHAGH!!! OWE OWE OWE!!!

It punched me so hard I started bleeding instantly:

This was right after it happened, by the time I got to the car to get a band-aide my finger was covered in blood.

Needless to say it got away. 

When we got home, we looked it up. It is a type of Mantis Shrimp or Stomatopod. They have the world's fastest punch and have been known to break 1/4inch aquarium glass. Its 'smashers' fold up at its chest kinda like these things:

(yes cause' nothing says Merry Christmas like a 'punching Santa'...who makes this stuff?)

Here is a great article talking all about how they can punch so hard. 

And here is one breaking a clam shell:

Directly after the 'attack' I was offended that it would hurt me! That shrimp is MEAN! but, then it occurred to me... 

Well, I was digging him out of his hole.