Legal Ramblings
[ Sunday, August 4, 2002 (3:37 AM) ] ( link )
Never eat lobster sashimi: I have always been an avid meat-eater, but today I came the closest I have ever come to actually renouncing the consumption of animals. (Not that I'm vegetarian now--at least I think not--but read on.)
My family and I went to a new Japanese restaurant today, and as a treat my dad ordered lobster sashimi--a very expensive dish, and supposedly quite a delicacy. When it came we were pleased with the presentation of the dish: the lobster had been cracked in half, and its head was laid on its base so that its nose (or whatever it is that the tip of a lobster is called) was facing upward, while behind it the tail had been turned upside down, opened, and sliced into thin raw bits for us to eat. The lobster looked and tasted amazingly fresh, and all of us enjoyed it immensely.
Then my brother (a non-sushi eater) said that he had seen the lobster move. We laughed at him--he's always been squeamish about sashimi. So my brother poked the lobster head--and the antenna definitely quivered. We got quiet when we saw this, then my brother poked it again and the antenna started wiggling again. Then the forelegs of the lobster started moving weakly as well. By this point most of the lobster had been consumed, but we were all getting freaked out. So we pushed the dish away toward the edge of the table, and when we did the lobster head toppled over backward against its own shell--and the lobster went crazy.
Well, at least that's what we thought at the time. But there was no doubt this time that the lobster was moving--it was jerking its big claws around widely, wriggling its forelegs, snapping its antennae back and forth. We all jumped back from the table and pulled a waiter to take the goddamned dish away from us before we lost our appetites entirely. The waiter whisked it away with a little reminder about how fresh their seafood was--but by that point I didn't really want to eat anymore.
Of course I've always known, when I eat meat, that I'm eating an animal that has been killed--and when it comes to lobster it's a tradition at Chinese restaurants (and probably others) for the waiter to show you your live lobster before they take it into the kitchen and boil it alive for your meal. But it's one thing to know these facts, and quite another to see the lobster live out its last moments as you eat its raw, mutilated flesh. Perhaps this is anthropomorphizing too much, but I couldn't help but think that the lobster was struggling to escape from us.
I used to poke fun at my friend Lindsey when she said, in defense of her own vegetarianism, that lobsters scream when caught. Suddenly, I don't find that very funny anymore.
No more lobster sashimi for me, thank you very much.
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