Woman stumbles upon critter while walking dog in Arizona. Meet Nathan the crustacean

A woman in Arizona was walking her dog when she came across something out of the ordinary.

And the May 13 discovery in Mesa landed her a new family pet named Nathan.

“I take my dog on a walk every morning, pretty early since it gets hot here,” Dondia Davies told McClatchy News in a May 16 phone interview. “I was doing our morning walk when I saw a crawfish walking in the middle of the sidewalk like it was going somewhere.”

Davies said she doesn’t live near any body of water and didn’t even know crawfish could be in the area.

“I knew he wasn’t going to live if I just left him,” Davies said. “I felt bad for him so I took him home with me.”

Davies initially had plans to drop off Nathan in a pond on her way to work, so for the time being she put him in a Tupperware container, she said.

“Then I started thinking, ‘You know what though? I just saved him from being killed. If I put him in a pond he’ll probably get eaten there too,’” she said.

Then, Davies made a “weird” post on NextDoor asking her neighbors if anyone wanted to take Nathan in, she said.

“I texted my friend saying, ‘This weird thing happened,’ and she said, ‘Oh my husband might want him,’” she said.

So Davies put Nathan in a bigger bowl and went to work.

But then something special happened. Davies’ 20-year-old daughter started to build a bond with the “little guy,” she said.

“My daughter was like, ‘Yeah his name is Nathan and we’re friends,’” she said.

That’s when Davies knew the mudbug would join the house that already had a dog and a free-roaming bunny in it, she said.

Davies later learned the invasive species might have come from a nearby irrigation system, so the encounter wasn’t as odd as she initially thought.

As for how Nathan is adjusting, he can now call an aquarium with a “bubble wall” that oxygenates the water his new home.

“Now I have this funny little story to tell for the rest of my life,” Davies said. “Now he has a name and a home.”

This story was originally published May 17, 2024 at 4:53 PM with the headline "Woman stumbles upon critter while walking dog in Arizona. Meet Nathan the crustacean."