I went to brunch with my beloved yesterday, to celebrate our zillionth (happy!) anniversary. It was beyond heavenly: all kinds of food I never make (my beloved & I have verrrry different ideas about food!). Like, crab claws (he hates shellfish; I adore it); baby shrimp salad; smoked salmon & trimmings; and an entire smörgåsbord of desserts! And there was lobster…

Recently I’ve been thinking — pretty deeply, actually — about the lives of what I eat. As I noted here & here, I’m slowly deleting sentient life forms from my diet. What’s hurting is that this is my decision, not that of others in my sphere of family & friends. I’m already a bit of a trial, as I don’t eat any pork (which means nooo traditional breakfast, and no holiday ham, hard for some folks!). My beloved hasn’t complained, YET. 😉

A friend & former colleague backdoored me that she has been a vegetarian for many years. And she reminded me that we boil lobsters alive. Since almost none of my friends cook their own lobster, I suspect this is a (painful) fact often elided in the buying of cooked/ frozen/ or restaurant lobster. As with bacon, and most meat, we don’t associate an animal’s death w/ what we eat from the plate. But it is. Dead, I mean. And while many many ‘vegetarians’ I know are actually pescatarians (they eat fish & shellfish), I’m not sure that’s going to work in my long run, so to speak…

Because the research shows that the ‘scream’ some folks tell you is just air escaping from the lobster as it boils? Well, sort of. In the same way that when I almost cut my toe off in an accident, ‘air’ escaped (LOUDLY) from my lungs.

In other words — they suffer, our lobsters. Now: you can pith a lobster (as we did frogs in biology lab), but it doesn’t completely stop possible suffering. You also can electrocute one, which does. But it’s more ‘hassle’ for restaurateurs, and not something many folks would care to pay for. Lobster is already pricey, right?

So there you have it: I have to figure (maybe we all do?) what my priorities are. Because I will always wear leather, I know — it’s sustainable, and despite the killing necessary to produce it, I’m more concerned about the chemicals involved in manufacturing plastics than I am w/ my guilt for supporting leather. Ideally, we should have humane leather… It just isn’t here quite yet!

But in the meantime, as I move weekly pebbles from one bowl to another, I am trying hard to question my priorities. And I know that lobster — like pork, like octopus, and probably my FAVOURITE, crab — is off my personal menu.

I guess if it was easy everyone would do it, right? 😉