I was surprised to see that my reporting on large lobsters and my musings on Bubba, the late 22-pound leviathan, caught the attention of the blog BoingBoing ("A Directory of Wonderful Things"), which ran several postings on Bubba. An astute BoingBoing contributor noted that Bubba wasn't all that large compared with one of the monstrous lobsters described in my book. (Hint: she was referring in particular to a scene in the Prologue, when a lobster threatens to attack a US Navy nuclear submarine full of marine biologists. I'm not joking; read the excerpt.)

Ever since the Bubba story surfaced, I've been intrigued by something the Associated Press reported: that a group calling itself "People for Eating Tasty Animals" had apparently offered a hefty sum for Bubba (he was worth several hundred dollars at local market prices), presumably for the right to boil him up for dinner. The group's acronym, PETA, is, of course, the same as that of the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. That's sort of like Al Qaeda deciding to go by the acronym "USA."

Curious, I decided to look for People for Eating Tasty Animals on the web. Before I relate the results of that search, though, for the sake of convenience let's distinguish between the two acronyms. Thanks to some emotionally clever logo designer, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals styles its acronym with a lower-case "e" -- PeTA. Somehow the acronym seems softer, cuter, and kinder that way, doesn't it? People for Eating Tasty Animals goes with the straight-up all-caps form -- PETA. Grrr.

Now mind you, people aligned with PeTA have accused PETA of being a front for the meat industry. (I haven't tried to confirm this independently, but according to PETA the accusation was reported in that well-known magazine of international gastronomic controversy, Vegetarian Times.) So I expected to find a glossy, flush website that would inspire in me the same tantalizing tingles I feel when I stalk a really huge, industrial supermarket meat counter: prehistoric pleasure combined with a postmodern inclination to vomit.

Instead, what I found was this. It's run by a gentleman named Michael Doughney, and appears not to have been updated since sometime around 1996. Part of the problem is that PeTA sued Mr. Doughney under trademark infringement rules, as well as under something called the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (wow), to prevent him from using the domain name he'd registered, peta.org, to host his PETA site; the contretemps was significant enough to have been reported in Wired magazine.

Mr. Doughney, who clearly feels that PeTA has wronged him, appears simply to want to provide "a resource for those who enjoy eating meat, wearing fur and leather, hunting, and the fruits of scientific research (and more!)."

It seems to me that Mr. Doughney must be catering to a class of superhuman (and fabulously well-dressed) Renaissance men. But if you're the rare sort for whom this type of resource induces nausea, I suggest you visit another website run by Mr. Doughney: BARF.org.

Comments? E-mail me.

The internet has been abuzz with mourning for Bubba, the 22-pound lobster who died this week despite efforts to save him (see my previous entries on Bubba here). One mourner wrote to me:

"I feel sad for Bubba. He should've been left alone to fight and mate. :(
Sorrow and sighing shall flee away. --Isaiah 35:10"

Generally, I would not honor the death of a lobster with a Biblical incantation. (If I did, I would have to spend the rest of my life chanting penance; a rough calculation suggests that during the two years I worked on a fishing boat I was indirectly responsible for the deaths of 60,000-80,000 lobsters.) But in this case, I do feel that it is appropriate to honor Bubba by invoking a restorative quote from scripture.

Another way to honor Bubba would be to consider his probable accomplishments. A question was passed on to me as follows:

"How many offspring is Bubba likely to have produced in 30 to 50 years?"

We can hazard a very rough guess. A Brood-of-Bubba thought experiment might run as follows: a female lobster only half Bubba's size, at around 10 pounds, after just one coupling with Bubba could easily produce 200,000 eggs (in perhaps two batches). Let's say Bubba impregnated two females a year -- certainly a conservative guess for a guy like him, as readers of THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS will know from following the exploits of M, the alpha male (a serious swinger) in my book. Scientists estimate that only about one in a thousand lobster larvae survive to harvestable size, but that's still 400 kids a year, or nearly 4,000 offspring over the course of a decade.

Only Bubba knew how he actually spent his time down there. Actually, I take that back -- lacking a brain per se, he probably wouldn't have remembered. But any rate, it does seem reasonable to temper our sadness at his passing with the thought that he is likely to have left an impressive legacy.

Comments? E-mail me.