Animal rights activists were appalled when they learned that a 7kg, 100-year-old lobster was about to become someone’s dinner in Florida. So they organised to “rescue” it and deliver it to an aquarium in Maine. They even gave it a name: Larry.
Larry the (unfortunate) lobster, seen here still alive (ABC News via YouTube)
Well, Larry has now gone to that big ocean in the sky. Which is to say that Larry’s dead. Cause of death? Overeager animal rights activists, it would seem.
After Larry was spotted on the local news for his gigantic size, an organisation called iRescue raised money to pack Larry in ice and gel packs and ship the lobster from Sunrise, Florida in a styrofoam container. Larry’s journey up the east coast to Maine was only supposed to take one day. Instead, Larry didn’t arrive until over a week later.
When Larry was first packaged for shipping last week, FedEx refused to take him. The restaurant’s styrofoam container was said to be leaking and iRescue, the animal rights organisation that was paying for the “rescue”, had to pick up the package and arrange for Larry to have a temporary home in some tank somewhere else.
The iRescue team packed up Larry again eight days later and used different gel packs and a different styrofoam container — presumably one that wouldn’t leak. Larry was finally shipped successfully on Tuesday, but when Larry finally arrived at the Maine State Aquarium around noon on Wednesday he was dead.
And frankly, it sounds like iRescue should have used some more cold gel packs if they wanted to give Larry a shot at surviving the journey.
“This lobster had a bit of a, you know, circuitous route from its origin,” Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Department of Marine Resources told the Portland Press Herald. “You need to really surround it in gel packs. This container really only had three.”
But even with all this effort, other animal rights organisations weren’t too keen on Larry living out his life in some no good aquarium like a common Sea Monkey.
“PETA is calling on the Maine State Aquarium to let this elderly crustacean live out his golden years in freedom and peace,” the always level-headed organisation said in a statement before Larry met his unfortunate demise.
Larry was originally purchased for a family dinner at the Tin Fish restaurant in Florida. It’s not clear what’s being done with Larry’s body now, but he probably wasn’t fed to anything at the the aquarium given the strict quarantine rules.
My guess is that Larry probably wound up in a dumpster. RIP Larry. We hardly knew ye, but you were obviously too delicious for this world.