Brown: What a little crab can teach

Kari Printz, owner of Central Mercantile and K-Town Cakery, tells Mike Konz of the Kearney Hub about how her business has become a gathering spot. The business was selected as a Nebraska Passport stop this year. Video by Alexis Stoffers, Kearney Hub.

What have we become? I use the term "we" and "become" rather loosely in the opening sentence of this column because, after four months of learning about Howie the Hermit Crab and her owner, Laura Porter of Omaha, I still can't shake the pair from my mind. Laura has created a cottage industry of gluing various hats on the crab and making TikTok videos of one of them cooing to the other.

Rick Brown

Laura claims that Howie, who is actually a female but uses a male professional name, uses sign language to indicate her desire for food. As far as I could determine, Howie has mastered only one sign — putting her claw up to her mouth as a signal that she wants more food. I can relate. I basically do the same thing when visiting my favorite fast food chains, although I have an advanced sign to indicate onion rings instead of French fries.

I first learned about Laura and Howie in March. At the time, I wondered exactly what I was doing wrong in this uber connected world, a world that often measures your worth on the number of clicks an online presence receives. "Millions of viewers" follow the videos of the pair. As far as I can tell, the main selling point of this enterprise rests on the tiny hats that Laura glues to the head of the crab. I don't have concrete evidence on the glue part, but I really don't know how else this otherwise naked crab can keep those tiny hats on her head.

Laura often wears a matching hat.

While most people might consider this merely innocent fun in a rather complex and baffling world, I feel offended because I didn't think of it first. With a little insight and forethought I could have trained the occasional mouse wandering through my house to wear a sparkling vest, bow tie and top hat, put on some dance-able music from the late 1980s and created my own award-winning TikTok videos.

Chalk it up to professional jealousy.

I must admit, watching the videos makes my skin crawl. Laura's crab baby talk takes all the fun out of my life. I feel like a grouchy old guy who longs to attend a pre-mosh pit Led Zeppelin concert. I understand that Laura created these videos for individuals other than me. She deals with doubters by shaming them. Shame on you for criticizing my little bright corner of the world where I can glue a hat on a crustacean, feed Howie pieces of mango and make others happy while selling advertising.

In a world of media fluff, it seems that these kinds of stories surface more and more while the important news of the day, say, a dancing mouse in a tux that I happen to control, gets shoved to the dark places on the internet. With the promise of AI slowly taking over our lives, the demise of meaningful newspaper columns like this one and the indifference of an increasingly twitchy population, I fear for the future of my children when it comes to the media. I fear for all of us when, someday, I hear the words, "Daddy, what were newspapers?"

Never mind, just watch the tap dancing mouse.

THE AUTHOR freelance journalist Rick Brown covers entertainment in central Nebraska where he writes columns on various topics and now appreciates the value of banning TikTok. [email protected].

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