There aren't many things I can "brag" about and some may think my
braggadocio in this article is frivolous, but I certainly think the lobsters would not. If they could talk, they would thank me for never having tasted their flesh. One time I happily missed the supposed "treat" and I never regretted that, but rather considered it a blessing that I wasn't involved in what I consider a cruel death by scalding in hot water.
Just this week I was happy to read a post by Drew Wilson on CARE 2. He wrote that "George" a 20-pound lobster was released from his tank into the Atlantic ocean near Kennebunkport, Maine, an area where lobster trapping is forbidden. After finding out about him, Peta had been able to convince City Crab and Seafood Restaurant in New York to spare this arthropod.
This saving grace for "George" made the author recall the starfish parable where someone tried to help as many of the hundreds of stranded starfish he could which had washed ashore on the sandy beach. Someone seeing the person picking them up-- one by one and throwing them back into the ocean told the rescuer that his was an exercise in futility. The rescuer replied--not for the ones I manage to save.
Hopefully, using the oft-repeated cliche about saving just ONE person--or in this case one lobster--will have been worth the little time involved in posting this small article. While some people may think nothing of putting a live lobster into scalding hot water where he or she is slowly boiled alive, many of us view this as an unnecessary cruelty. One Cleveland chef says he thrusts a pointed object into the live lobster's brain first--killing him or her before immersing the lobster into the scalding hot water.
I never like to see live lobsters in tanks in supermarkets either. Of course, lodging my complaints to the manager does nothing. Hopefully, when many more of us will, maybe things will change. These poor lobsters have their claws tied together and are often piled atop one another in tiny tanks--both in supermarkets and in restaurants.
So, if you can in the future forego this "gourmet" dish, somehow I think you will not be sorry and experience the same warm feeling all of us do when we choose to be sensitive and compassionate. And know that the author considered lobsters amazing. He noted that some can live to be 200 years old and they even exhibit marks of intelligence as well as being social creatures. Living in the dark, deep, and cold waters of the ocean, when caught in a trap some escape with the help of
others in the same trap. Though different from us, they are intelligent and caring.
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