Every day as I walk out of my hotel I pass a Chinese restaurant (well I pass quite a few as my hotel is in China Town) which has fish tanks in the window.
One of these is home to ten or more lobsters. They are pretty crammed in anyway, but accentuate this problem by pretty much all crushing themselves into the right hand corner of the tank. It is a somewhat tragic, rather than appetising, display.
Every day I wonder if the lobsters at the bottom of the pile are still alive. It's hard to tell as living lobsters are essentially just skeletons anyway.
After living here for over a month I see those lobsters as kind of friends (though I have no idea of the turnover of lobster in the restaurant and am aware that it may be a totally different bunch than the ones that were there when I arrived - a couple of them must have remained unchosen even in that time, probably the ones at the bottom of the pile who look like they've been dead for two months. No-one would chose those.).
And I have to say the sight of those friends imprisoned in a tiny tank makes me a bit sad.
Which is stupidly hypocritical as a) I like eating lobster, it is delicious and
b) I have no problem with eating the dead caracsses of other animals which are kept out of sight in fridges at the back of the restaurant.
But every day as I pass the lobsters seem to be shouting out to me "Kill me! Please! I am in such lobster Hell! Let me die!"
And that might be one solution. I could go into the restaurant and order ten lobsters. This would have the dual result of releasing my friends from their purgatory and me getting to eat lots of delicious (and oh so fresh) lobster.
Of course, in a sense this would merely lead to the restaurant buying more lobsters. Lobsters that would be kept in the confines of that tank (that doubles as a kind of perverse abatoir-zoo), lobsters that I would have to eat to free, which would make space for more lobsters. It's a vicious circle, though one whose viciousness is slightly lessened by how much delicious lobster I would get to eat.
Alternatively I could creep over there under the cover of night and smash the restaurant window and break open the tank and let those lobsters out to roam free in the streets of Melbourne.
Yes, they may all probably be soon captured, or run over, or eaten by passersby. But if just one of those lobsters made it back to the sea it would make it all worthwhile.
Alternatively I couold probably just buy the lobsters and take them back to the sea myself. But where's the fun (and lobster jeopardy) in that?
