Setting Free the Lobsters From Out the Lions' Den

“The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?"”
     --  Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

The concept isn't a new one, and yet frankly, it's not something easily traceable as to where it began.  More important than the lineage though, is that it slowly seeps into the conciousness - not because the act itself is going to put a stop to all cruelty, but because the awareness of the action itself will get the lobes buzzing.

The root is probably enmeshed somewhere in the history of Buddhist thought - that upon seeing animals being led to a slaughterhouse, one ought purchase the animals so that they are not killed.

This is a confusing action to some and made even more so by the fact that not all Buddhists are vegetarians.  While the untrained mind would call that hypocritical, the act of saving a life can sometimes be a different spoke of the tangent than being directly connected to the hub of what one eats, especially when we speak of what food another feeds you...but this digresses...

It is said that Leonardo da Vinci would go to market and purchase caged birds and release them.  In his work The Mind of Leonardo da Vinci (1928), Edward MacCurdy wrote the following (although he takes the information from Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) who wrote a tome called Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters, and Sculptors - which was first published first in 1550).

"…The mere idea of permitting the existence of unnecessary suffering, still more that of taking life, was abhorrent to him. Vasari tells, as an instance of his love of animals, how when in Florence he passed places where birds were sold he would frequently take them from their cages with his own hand, and having paid the sellers the price that was asked would let them fly away in the air, thus giving them back their liberty."

It would bother me as a child, down into the sinking of the stomach laden with the ununderstanding (which does not translate into any legitimate excuse) going into the seafood store with my relatives, watching them purchase the slices of swordfish, the red snapper with their mouths agape - at least these had already met their fate.  But in the bubbling tank at the end of the case, piled atop each other, claws bound, they'd press up against the glass and seem to...wave.  In some twisted parallel to going to the humane society and picking out a cat - little did this feline lover know back then that the ones not chosen would eventually be put to death - as a seven year old there's no possible way that could have sat well in me or without a well of tears welling up and leaving without all of them in tow.  Maybe this is why all of our pets are the ones who have walked up to the door, knocked, and asked if they could come in (and this is not a misrepresentation of the heart of the truth of the matter).

It would be years later that mother's boyfriend opened up the refrigerator and revealed two live lobsters crawling around the vegetable bin and then convinced me to watch as he threw them into the boiling water.  They turn red.  Like being burned, was all the mind could think.  Then, sitting there at dinner watching the two of them go to town with nutcrackers and metal picks...looking back it is amazing that vegetarian wasn't the color of this writer's blood immediately after that.  But that's a whole other story for another time.

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Back in 2010, in a collection entitled More to Follow, penned by the very hands typing here today, one of the stories, Solitude Defeated, had this to say:

"And as you pass the seafood section, the eyes of all the bass, the mackerel, the snapper…follow you…point you to…The lobsters hands bound in elastic bands as they lay awake and await the march to their fate.  You think of the strength of the Dalai Lama buying cattle on their way to slaughter…Would it be so unacceptable then to just smash the side of the case?  This would be the hour, this would be the time - little resistance to scoop them all up…or even just one…and make way for the door…"

Also...

"You head back toward the store, attempting to find gumption and nerve, crumbs of hot in the belly from past cookies that were never quite cleaned up or tidied.  You straighten the shirt, turn the cap, stand up tall and loosen the gait.  For the beach is only about thirty minutes away…and there are a whole lot of lobsters who need to see a sunrise they never expected would wait for them to arrive."

And while the story leaves it in pointed ambiguity as to whether setting free the lobsters was to be achieved by the shattering of glass or the digitizing of a debit card (you'll have to read the whole thing and make your own determination as to the intent of the protagonist), suffice to say one is a far more productive way of release, resistance, revolution instead of just simple rebellion.

In fact, that very action itself was in the news not all that long ago.  From Yahoo.com, July 2012:

"A 17-pound lobster on a restaurant menu would be a delicious dinner option for most people but not for one Connecticut man who saw it as a humanitarian mission.

Don MacKenzie of Niantic, Conn., purchased the lobster from a local restaurant but never took a bite. Instead, he released it back into the Long Island Sound Tuesday because he thought the lobster, nicknamed "Lucky Larry" by the locals, deserved to live."

And even more recently, in February of this year, a 27 pound lobster was to be set free:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/life-video/video-monster-lobster-to-be-set-free/article2347979/ (links take one away from this page so Control/Right click to open in a new window)

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There are all sorts of angles that get sprouted for and against embarking on such a journey, back out into the sea.

In August of 2011, a number of Buddhists and Buddhist Monks purchased 500 lobsters from the local fishermen and released them back into the ocean to celebrate The Turning of the Wheel.  You can read more here and here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/lobsters-back-to-sea_n_924229.html (links take one away from this page so Control/Right click to open in a new window)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-buddhists-lobsters-idUSTRE7734L520110804 (links take one away from this page so Control/Right click to open in a new window)

Of course, ever so daft in their mannerisms, the absurd logic (although that word seems counter-intuitive) of PETA (and remember this mouth and stomach eats a vegan diet and thinks PETA is absurd - so please, as an aside, don't paint all animal rescue endeavors with the brush of PETA)  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/11/lobsters-back-to-sea_n_924229.html (links take one away from this page so Control/Right click to open in a new window) makes their argument against releasing lobsters because it is just encouraging the fishermen to keep fishing and make more money.

One post will claim that you'll introduce an invasive species, another states that you could have a diseased lobster who will spread the ick throughout the local populations.  Others make the usual snide comments about animals being so tasty or PETA standing for People Eating Tasty Animals.  Some mention that the money could be better spent on other causes - often there's the argument about putting the money toward humans rather than animals.  Each scientific thought is worth listening to although there is rarely any study or actual science to back up the claim.  The more cycnical comments are easy to ignore.  Of course, there's always just the plain stright no chaser vitriol as well.

Much of this sounds like the same argumentative facets and sides that kept appearing when trying to learn if it was healthy to feed corn to the family of deer who befriended us over the winter.  Yes.  No.  Hunt.  Kill.  Help.  Sick.  Population.  Over-population.  Starvation.  An ocean of opinion, and truth seems like driftwood on the horizon line.

The truth is, compassion is compassion, and in its purest form it rises above opinion.  The rest is silence.

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The whole gist and impetus of this column comes from being out driving the other day, and seeing a sign for the New Milford Lions Club lobster sale that is taking place on May 25th.  Ever since writing Solitude Defeated, there's been a deeper pang in the heart each week at Stop & Shop.  For whatever reason the big yellow sign on the side of the road plucked the proper chord to make certain the bells went off, rang and proclaimed, it's time to do something about this.

So, we're planning on being there on the 25th.  Not with signs and pickets, pitchforks or torches...just a couple of coolers - or maybe we'll get a couple of the cat carriers out so that there's something obviously amiss with our plan.  The event starts at 10am and we're likely to be there at that time.  We're going to purchase a couple of lobsters and then take the drive down to Norwalk and release them back into the sound.  Right now it's just us - Mama Bird, The Little Man, and myself.  But, if you're interested in the idea, we'd love some company.  Contact me here and we'll co-ordinate rooster@therooseterscrow.org.  It'll be an interesting experience, most of all for the lobsters who will get to swim again - and in something larger than a pot of boiling water.

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"Other animals, which, on account of their interests having been neglected by the insensibility of the ancient jurists, stand degraded into the class of things. ... The day has been, I grieve it to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated ... upon the same footing as ... animals are still. The day may come, when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized, that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps, the faculty for discourse?...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?... The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes... "

     -- Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)
             Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

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