Not just one but almost 20 Crab Pearls!!!

My family and I were at the Crab Cooker in Newport Beach, Ca. for my mother's birthday. We've been going since my brother and I were small children. We all ordered our usual, and mine is the Alaskan King Crab legs.

I'm a slow eater, and like to take all of the meat out of the legs before I start eating. The meat looked fantastic, and I was hungry! I was enjoying my first bite, when I noticed something hard, and the more I moved the meat around, the more hard objects I began to feel. My first thought was "Who's been shooting at fish with BB guns?!" Because that is what they felt like round large BB's. Odd thought I know, since it was eating crab!

I spit out close to 10 pearls, ranging in size from small to large. My family thought I was losing my teeth. They all looked at me with pretty much the same shocked look on their faces. It was pretty priceless. We called the waitress over, and she took them pretty quickly... came back and said they were eggs. At first I thought... oh ok... I was not convinced. I'm not a marine biologist, but I know crabs don't carry their eggs in their legs, and females are supposed to be protected and released upon capture. Then when I took another bite and more... that's when we all looked at each other and said... um no... the phones came out and we searched Google.

All of the research I've done, people have noted 1 or 2. I pulled close to 20 from the crab legs I had. I was able to save 5 of them. The waitress threw the first batch away, but another waitress pulled two from the trash for me. I had one, and the manager gave me the two he had set aside to show the top manager. Anyway, pretty cool experience! :}