What do I earn for visiting the fancy grocery instead of the dilapidated store down the street?
A staredown with a lobster eager to break his rusty cage ... and scuttle.
If it were a tank so thick with lobsters that the only visible movements were swiveling antennae and claws seeking leverage, I could have ignored it. The plight of piled crustaceans is more easily obscured that than a lonesome feisty one.
But this one wanted out badly, grinding his legs against the tank and rubbing those banded claws futilely against the glass.
That last angry lobster saw the world beyond the square tank ...if, of course, a lobster can can feel anger or want more from life than captivity ending in a steaming stockpot.
Circling the store, I passed the tank again to the same reaction. Damn that charismatic invertebrate. "OK, fine .... I won't eat your kind anymore either," I muttered in the empty seafood aisle. So long as chickens don't silence their annoying traits anytime soon, I'm not turning veggie.
Nor does my sudden change of heart save that lobster - by the end of the weekend, it cracked shell will mingle in the trash of someone much richer than myself. If I've learned nothing else from The Simpsons, I know that all lobsters taken from the ocean are destined for a warm bath.
So lobster has departed the menu - actually, it departed three years ago, the last time I had some for dinner.
I'll give it up, no matter the tenderness of the tail meat ... OK, I have to go back to my carrots now.
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