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Jewish World Review
March 7, 2005
/ 26 Adar I, 5765
Requiem for a crustacean
By
Tom Purcell
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Dearly Beloved,
We gather today to celebrate the long life of Bubba the lobster, who died in human captivity in Pittsburgh last week. Surely you saw national news reports about him.
Bubba was a massive crustacean, weighing 23 pounds. He may have been 30, 40 or even 100 years old. He would have been living still had not a cruel Nantucket fisherman decided to make him somebody's dinner.
Bubba's horrendous journey brought him to Wholey's Fish Market in Pittsburgh, where his tremendous size won him public notice. PETA soon demanded that Bubba's death sentence be commuted, and the fish market owner consented. He handed Bubba over to handlers at the Pittsburgh Zoo.
But this act of generosity was too little too late.
Bubba had already suffered immense psychological damage by this point. He longed to return home to his friends and natural habitat. But when he was told he would not return, but instead be sent to Ripley's, where his immense size would be cruelly exploited for profit and fun, he lost his will to live.
Some find this story funny — they find humor when overzealous groups, such as PETA, demand that all lobsters be freed and released back to the cold waters of the Atlantic. When PETA says every lobster should be treated as an individual, some think it funny to say, "Yeah, an individual meal."
Such jokes do nothing to advance understanding of lobster oppression, and there is much to understand.
According to PETA's Lobster Liberation Web site, lobsters aren't much different than humans. Lobsters carry their young for nine months and can live more than 100 years. They have a long childhood and an awkward adolescence.
Bubba's teen years were surely difficult. I'd not be surprised if the other lobsters, jealous of his size, called him names. "Hey, big claws!" they probably said or "Hey, Bubba, you're so big your shell has stretch marks." They learned such behavior from humans, no doubt.
But Bubba survived. He went on to live a spectacular lobster existence. PETA says that like dolphins, he used complicated signals to explore his surroundings and establish social relationships. He likely traveled more than 100 miles each year, something lobsters do.
I know that experts say lobsters are not lovable ocean critters, but violent beings that fight, terrorize and eat each other. I have heard the absurd claim that their brains are tiny, and that their lack of a central nervous system makes them impervious to boiling water or a butcher's knife.
I have followed the absurd argument that the way lobsters are prepared and eaten is humane. That's one of the points Ian McEwan argues. He is the author of the book "The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean."
And in a Salon interview, McEwan has the audacity to argue that lobsters are left free to crawl about — not raised in unbearable circumstances on some crowded farm. And when they die, they do not feel much, if any, pain or suffering — a claim allegedly validated by a recent Norwegian study.
But I say hogwash. These are the words of bloodthirsty humans who wish to maintain their homicidal dominion over helpless creatures. Such humans are responsible for the murder of more than 20 million lobsters every year — and they killed Bubba.
I get choked up when I think of how he avoided their traps. He likely outlived hundreds of New England fishermen who tried to capture him. All he ever wanted was to live and let live. All he wanted was to dwell freely in the droppings of others.
He was a spectacular Nephropidae, a Homarus Americanus who wasn't bothering anyone when he was snatched from the ocean floor. His bottom feeding days are gone forever, but we can only hope that this senseless act of murder will spotlight the outrageous cruelty of man.
Bubba, I know you're in lobster heaven now. I hope you have both claws around the neck of a New England fisherman. And may you extend that heartless rat the same courtesy he extended to you.
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© 2005, Tom Purcell
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