LABADIEVILLE -- Aromas from a sack’s worth of crawfish and an ample helping of Zatarain’s All-In-One in the pot teased Blaine Naquin’s nostrils as he sat on a truck’s tailgate Sunday waiting for supper and watching his mom water her new peach tree.

(Abby Tabor/NYTRNG)

Blaine Naquin, 14, shows off the crawfish that he found during a family crawfish boil Sunday in Labadieville.

Then right there, from his daddy’s truck, the Labadieville Middle School eighth-grader spotted a lone mudbug that had escaped its sack-mates’ fate.

Closer inspection revealed that this particular crawfish was unlike any that Blaine, 14, had seen. Or his parents, or even his 76-year-old Uncle Junior who has eaten crawfish longer than anyone in the family.

Extending from the crustacean’s left arm, where two pinchers should have been, were four. And another little nub that almost looked like a thumb, bringing the total number of individual pinchers to six.

"I thought it was weird," Blaine said. "It looked like it was waving at me."

The family came by the oddity in a most-ordinary way.

Henry Naquin, who works at the Conrad Shipyard in Morgan City as a forklift and cherry-picker operator, was offered the 40-pound sack by his supervisor Howard Gaudet, whose brother-in-law catches them near the spillway.

Henry called his wife, Dawn, to share the good news, and at first she said no.

She didn’t want to mess with all that boiling.

A nursing student at Nicholls State University, she had a lot of homework that night.

(Abby Tabor/NYTRNG)

A biologist said this crawfish’s mutation, which left the mudbug with six pinchers instead of four, was likely caused by damage to the claw while the crawfish was molting, or shedding its skin.

But she relented, and Henry drove the crawfish home in the bed of his white GMC Canyon.

And everything was normal until Blaine discovered the unique crawfish. First he showed Henry.

"What the hell is that?" Henry exclaimed.

Blaine’s 10-year-old sister Kelsey said, "Wow, that’s amazing."

Scientists told of the find Monday said they had not heard of such a thing before.

"Sometimes we will see one extra piece of a claw sticking out," said Greg Lutz, a biologist with Louisiana State University’s Cooperative Extension in Baton Rouge. "It may have just been a mutation, more than likely an unusual mutation. It may have had something to do with a problem when it was molting, some sort of damage when it regenerated."

Lutz likened the occurrence to the oddities one sees at freak shows, like two-headed snakes. He and other biologists ruled out global warming and environmental issues.

Henry tried keeping the multi-clawed mudbug alive in water, but it succumbed late Sunday.

He now has it in his freezer, where he will keep it for a few days while figuring out what to do with it.

Henry would like to turn a profit from his find but said he doesn’t know where to market it. Asked about eBay, the online auction house, he shook his head.

"We’ve never done nothing like that," he said, noting the find’s significance. "All the crawfish they had in the sack and this one is the one that came out. I’ve got to wonder why just this one? It’s got to be a sign. It’s got to be a sign of something."