dstieger wrote:27 years in the Navy....got a number of crabs stories....most of them second hand....funniest was a buddy who came away from a liberty port with crabs in his beard....they weren't migrators
Not so funny, though when someone in your berthing compartment gets 'em.....imagine 90 guys living in a space about the size of your living room....some sucky days....especially for the young sailors responsible for collecting and washing ALL of the sheets, blankets, etc.
LOL, yep. OMG, sea story.
On Texas (CGN-39), my first ship, in the 80's, when a booter checked on board, right before taps they'd put out the "crab lines". Which was dental floss run from all the racks in the aisle down to theirs the first night at sea for the lad. (Boots always got the bottom racks) When the kid would ask "WTF?"
It would then be explained that due to the close quarters that everyone onboard had the crabs, that he was going to get them first laundry cycle so it was just better to just get it over with quicker, rather than risk getting the weaker "laundry crabs". So the kids already spun up and hinky, and the lights go out.
Now the salty guys would put decent sized drops of mineral oil on the floss at their end. In the berthing compartment red lights you could see these little drops slowly moving down the dental floss to the that lower rack. They looked amazing like a little critter crawling.
This would typically go maybe an hour, there would be this army of "crabs" going down the lines, and about this time the kid would have the "Shawshank Redemption "new fish"" moment and bolt for the head freaking out.
This would generally be followed by a good laugh and mediocre ass chewing about not screwing with the boots. LOL.
Holy moly did we have a lot of fun. And yes, I was the bottom of those lines at one point in Deck berthing. And yes, I bolted. I about killed myself in all that dental floss.
So yeah, it was funny later. Much later.
