How to Bail
With or without your pants!
Hi, friends.
I hope those of you with kids are weathering the end-of-school season well enough. Concerts! Graduations! Extra-bulky art projects coming home with no place to store them! Mild dread because the school strings program is starting next year and your second-grader says she wants to learn violin! Ahem.
What I’ve Been Working On
On the book side, I returned my copy-edited manuscript to my publisher with no drama (aside from a minor disagreement with the copy editor about the spelling of a word I made up). I also wrote my acknowledgments, which was a little stressful because I probably forgot to thank someone. Sorry/thank you, whoever you are!
After that, I drafted a story about lemur pregnancies. I also started reporting a story about juvenile cowbirds and another story about reptiles and climate change. Talking with lots of enthusiastic researchers about their animals is always treat (not that I don’t also love approving the placement of commas in an 84,000-word manuscript).
Also a treat: The strawberry patch in my garden is popping off this year.
Dear Inkfish
I have plans for a trip with friends coming up. We made these plans months ago, but now for a variety of reasons I’m no longer looking forward to the trip. Actually I don’t really want to go at all. But I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, and I don’t want to miss out. How do I decide whether to bail?
—Should I Stay or Should I Go
Personally, bailing has been working out great for me lately.
My family was supposed to go on a camping trip this past weekend with a few other families, but as the day approached, the forecast was looking dicey. Some people still wanted to go. I imagine we were all feeling not only FOMO about a fun outdoor trip and hangout time with other adults, but Fear Of (our kids) Missing Out (and making a huge stink about it).
Sensing some ambivalence in the text thread, though, I shared that our family was maaaaybe less excited about the prospect of camping in thunderstorms. And by the next day, everyone else had come to the same conclusion. Good thing, because it poured for about six hours on Saturday (making it something like our 11th or 12th consecutive rainy weekend here, according to news sources!).
But I am just one un-hardy camper. Maybe we can get better advice about deciding when to bail from a hermit crab.
Hermit crabs are soft ocean animals who stay safe by living in the discarded shells of other creatures. If they outgrow their shell or find one they like better, they do a quick switch.
In a recent study, researchers in Japan asked what happens when a certain species of small hermit crab meets a certain larger predatory crab. This hermit crab likes to live in snail shells, and the predatory crab likes to eat hermit crabs.
The researchers collected crabs of both species and put them in tanks together, then sat back to watch.
While the poor little guys hid inside their shells, the predatory crabs did their best to crack those shells open. If the hermit crabs could keep their cool and stay put while their shells held strong, they would survive.
If their shell cracked a tiny bit, though, many of the hermit crabs decided to bail. I love this move because it looks like a cartoon character getting scared out of their pants:
If the hermit crabs bailed soon enough, they were likely to survive the encounter. If they stayed put until their shell was completely broken open, they got eaten. And if they waited until the shell was opened, then tried to bail, they were also likely to become lunch.
The moral: In an emergency, don’t worry about your pants.
The other moral: Effective bailing is all about timing. If you don’t yet have all the information you need—your shell is still intact—it’s safest to stay put until you know more. As soon as you sense danger, it’s time to go. If you wait too long, you’ll probably be eaten.
I’m assuming your plans with friends aren’t putting you in actual danger (if they are, please disregard all of the above and find new friends). But if new circumstances have made you less comfortable about taking this trip, it’s best to get out before your change of plans will inconvenience people or damage your friendships. Make like a hermit crab, do a graceful leap, and take a rain check.