Not too long ago my friends and I had a crawfish boil in which we learned how the steps to preparing and consuming them. My cousin Crystal brought them to Denver all the way from Texas. They were still alive (for the most part), so we knew they would be good and fresh.
None of the rest of us had ever made or eaten crawfish before, so it was a learning curve for all of us land-locked folk. Here how we did it:
Step 1: Play with the crawfish. They are alive and try to pinch you and your cat.
Step 2: Rinse them out in a bucket filled with salted water for about five minutes. They hate this.
Step 3: Put the crawfish into a colander to strain them from their salty, no-longer-clean bath. This is the time to sort out the dead ones. You definitely don’t want to be eating rancid crustacean. Rinse the rest of them.
Step 4: Cook them for about 10-15 minutes in a giant lobster pot filled with water, corn on the cob, potatoes, and lemons. There was some sort of special Louisiana boil seasoning or something in there as well.
Step 5: Fish everything else and dump it onto a platter. Sprinkle with more special seasoning.
Step 6: Eat them. How, you ask?
Hold the thorax in one hand and the tail in the other.
Using the hand on the tail, twist it towards and away from you.
Pull the two segments apart. 
Grab the first plate of the exoskeleton and remove.
Hold the last plate nearest the tail, pinch until you feel the meat release, and pull the meat out of the shell.
Remove the intestine by peeling it back from the front (it’s not a vein, people).
Aftermath.
It was very delicious, albeit a lot of work for small amounts of meat. It’s a lot like the amount of effort it takes to cook a live crab and prepare and open it yourself. Other than that, I would highly recommend it as a very fun group activity, paired with (but of course), lots of wine. 🙂
From April to Table 
Love it babe! I wanna do this together.
Sent from my iPad:
Christopher A. Knapp