“They are dumb,” Christopher Stracuzza tells the New York Times. “They are like the dumbest people in the world.” They, in this case, are the TSA agents who manhandled his gigantic lobster and went viral with a photo on the agency’s Twitter account.
Just a lobster. Photo: Getty
Stracuzza hit the seafood jackpot on a trip to a market in Connecticut. He picked up 12 standard lobsters and one hulking 9kg beast. He was planning a big cookout at his home in Savannah, Georgia and he dropped $US700 ($916) on what would soon be the main course. But first, he had to get the crustaceans home. The big guy went on the bottom of a cooler that was taped up and “Live Lobster!” was scrawled on top.
The 32-year-old auto-body repairman checked the lobster cooler with his luggage at the airport in Boston and picked it back up when he arrived back in Georgia. But the cooler was different when he touched down. The duct tape he’d used had been replaced with tape that said TSA on it. When he got home, he opened the cooler and found the big lobster, which he’d named “Dinnah”, sitting on top of all the smaller lobsters. He was furious. But he became even more furious when a friend called him and said, “Your lobster is all over the internet.”
The friend was referring to this photo that a TSA agent posted and the agency’s official social accounts re-upped:
.@TSA officers are skilled at screening all sorts of items in checked baggage…including this 20+ pound lobster at @BostonLogan pic.twitter.com/euhyyO6F7V
— Michael McCarthy (@TSAmedia_MikeM) June 26, 2017
“Would you want a 500-pound [227kg] person sitting on top of you?” he asks the Times. And while it might seem weird to be so worried about the emotional state of a creature that you plan to boil alive, you have to admit he has a point. I would not want a 227kg person sitting on me. Being boiled alive doesn’t take very long. Sitting for hours in the cargo hold of a JetBlue aircraft with that much weight pressing down doesn’t sound fun. “You don’t think a lobster gets stressed too?” Straccuza asked.
A TSA spokesperson tells the Times, “We share images through social media to provide helpful travel tips and to better inform the travelling public about TSA’s mission.” It’s become common for government agencies that the public doesn’t trust to make attempts at being fun on social media. The CIA is a prominent example.
Straccuza isn’t making any demands or attempting to get anyone in trouble. He’s just pissed off.
Who knew that working in auto-body repair affords one the life of a jet-setting lobster aficionado? If Straccuza’s big problem is the mishandling of his extremely expensive food, life can’t be too bad.