In 1993 the world witnessed the incredible journey of two dogs and a cat trek through hundreds of miles of Canadian wilderness to find their way back home in the aptly titled Homeward Bound movie. This amazing tale is based on a novel by Sheila Burnford written in 1961. Harking on the quote from Lord Byron, “truth is stranger than fiction” what if the true story, the influence of Sheila’s work was even more incredible than the tale she gave to the world?
Based on minimal research I propose the original, real life Incredible Journey was really about Egyptian Crabs traveling through the North American Wilderness from Mississippi to the East Coast in an effort to make it back to Egypt.
Tobacco leaves have been found in Egyptian mummies leading to the hypothesis that Egypt had contact with the pre-colombian America. Since this hypothesis scientists have arisen to disprove the validity of this conclusion however that doesn’t fit my crab narrative so we won’t discuss that.
It’s the year 47BC. After a drawn out Roman Civil War, Julius Caesar, the first Roman Emperor helps Cleopatra in gaining rule over all of Egypt. It’s been so many years of upheaval and stress she needs a cigarette to relax. Unfortunately this process will take a couple years. She commissions a trading boat to travel to the Americas and pick up some tobacco leaves. To make sure the crew stays on course to get cigarettes she enlists her crabs to make them stay the course.
Crab mentality is a psychological term based on the concept that if one crab is escaping a bucket the rest will pull that crab back in because if they don’t get to be free then that crab doesn’t get to be free either. Cleopatra’s crabs could keep the voyage on course by pinching the human’s ankles whenever they veered from the destination. If they don’t get to be free then neither do these humans. Overall, this made the sailors aboard the vessel very………………crabby.
Crabs are too small to wield swords and so the Egyptians equipped warrior crabs with sharp needles that they use similar to a human fencer using an epee. These needles came in useful when at the mouth of the Mississippi river the crew was attacked by a gang of alligators. Out of the 200 Egyptian crab warriors hired to pinch human ankles to keep them on track, only 3 survived. Mainly by using needles to stab out crocodile eyes
The remainder of the crew quickly fled leaving the three crabs stranded in a strange land.
I’m assuming crabs have the same ability to find their home as carrier pigeons and so the crabs began crab walking up the Mississippi River looking for a good spot to start heading East.
They eventually made it safely over the Appalachian Mountains crab walking the whole way. It wasn’t until they got to the Chesapeake Bay that they met resistance. The Chesapeake Bay is home to the mighty blue crab. A monster of a crab that did not take kindly to its Egyptian brethren.
The hordes of monster blue crabs took the offensive. The Egyptian Crab Warriors protected by their skilled needlework began a contested retreat similar to Xenophon’s March of The Ten Thousand. They crossed the Delaware River, the blue crabs were still in pursuit. In wasn’t until they crossed the Newark Bay to the island one day to be called Manhattan that the blue crabs gave up and went back to the Chesapeake Bay looking for something else to do in these pre-internet days.
In Manhattan the crabs found themselves stuck with no way to get across the Atlantic. They had to get a message across the ocean. They started killing beavers and throwing them into the sea hoping the bodies would float back to Egypt and they understood the message: “Dam! When are you coming to get us!”
The beavers never made it to Egypt though. They landed in the Netherlands where they were growing bored of tulips and looking for a new hobby. They cut open a beaver and saw that the only food contents in its stomach was a bagel and so knew that this was a Manhattan beaver. The Dutch then came to the new world, established New Amsterdam which became New York City and the rest is history.
As a thank you, they shipped the Egyptian crab warriors back to Egypt where they loaded up the crab needle statue to put it in its place in Manhattan.
So anyways, in Central Park there is a pillar that has a crab and it is the oldest outdoor man-made object in the city and it came from Ancient Egypt.
And I’m assuming this was the inspiration for Homeward Bound