When is an invasion of land crabs a good thing? When you’re an owner of a tire repair shop. As a result of an unusually large crustacean invasion in Stuart, Florida, business is up for the tire repair shops because the crawling creatures are puncturing tires with their claws. Breeding season and the recent storms are the reasons cited for the land crabs’ presence in the streets and just about everywhere else in Stuart. In one case, land crabs blackened the road. Here’s WPTV News with the story:

Motorists in Stuart still have a few more weeks of the breeding season to avoid street-crossing land crabs, a task not so easy to accomplish.

“There were just so many, there were like 60 or 70 or 80, and you couldn’t miss it, because the roadway was almost black,” Dennis Culver told WPTV News. “If you slow up, they just sit there and just keep coming.”

And coming, and coming. They are literally everywhere.

“They were getting in the pool, and all around the pool, and all over the tennis court, and everybody that came to swim said, `Oh my gosh, there’s crabs in the courtyard, there’s crabs in the parking lot!’” Culver said.

But it is on the streets where the land crabs are causing the most trouble.

For a while, local mechanic Anthony Ludovico was at a loss as to what was causing so many flat tires and a 50 percent increase in business. He’d find punctures without nails or other sharp objects until finally discovering a claw embedded in one flat tire.

“I didn’t know what it was at first,” Ludovico told WPTV. “I thought it was a pen, then I tried to grab it, and it was really hard and hollow.”

So how do you deal with so many crabs? A commenter on the WPTV website offered up a delicious suggestion.

“You get me 50 gallons on melted butter, and I’ll solve your problem for ya!!!” wrote Tod Nichol.