Lobsters

They are one of the few creatures that doesn’t die of ‘old age’ – what does that mean, anyway…that your telomeres ran out and your DNA can’t efficiently copy itself anymore, or that your blood-pumping muscle lost adequate lubrication, or that you were just too worn out to press on.  Nonetheless, lobsters almost always die of ‘unnatural causes’ – of course, we can ask what does that mean either…is falling down the stairs and whacking your noggin any less natural than a heart attack?  Some creatures – and by creatures, I mean the full extent that that word implies, that is, a part of special creation – in the lobster family (or at least same sub-phylum), like the mantis shrimp have special capabilities, like being able to close their pincers so fast that a bubble temporarily forms that has a temperature hotter than the surface of the sun, thus stunning their prey.  But if you prefer your lobsters dipped in melted butter, you can start a franchise named vicariously for the crustacean with the quintessential descriptive color tacked onto the name, put them a tank with large rubber bands around their pincers, and allow guests to select which one they want dropped in boiling water to suit their palate.  This is not a diatribe against eating seafood, or any meat for that matter, for the Master Himself ate fish, lamb and other meat and thus we should feel no compunction in doing so.   It is more a remark on what a strange world we live, when seen from a certain angle.  How bizarre must the extraction from the sea to being stuffed in a small tank clustered with your compatriots to the lobsters.  How much more bizarre is it that we take something that crawled on the bottom of the ocean, quite literally, and call it a delicacy?  Reality, is of necessity, stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.