By Ed Staskus

   It wasn’t breaking news that Prince Edward Island was an island. It was old news that it had not always been one. It was news that didn’t matter to some who lived on the island, however. They weren’t overly concerned about the past. They were concerned about right now. They cared about heating oil being delivered on time and what time the school bus was coming. They cared about the flu that stopped them dead in their tracks. They cared about how they were going to put food on the table. They knew for sure that nothing from the prehistoric past had anything to do with it. 

   What the land and the sea were all about wasn’t news to the lobsters who lived offshore. They had been around much longer than the fishermen, farmers, and townsfolk who plied their trades in the Maritimes. The crustaceans had seen it all, although they hadn’t seen amnesic shellfish poisoning before. The new toxin was killing Canadians who ate shellfish that year. No lobster ever went to any of their funerals. “That’s a dose of your own medicine,” Louie the Large said, chuckling to himself that the toxin wasn’t bothering his kith and kin.

   Lobsters didn’t have a trade or much else to do, other than eat anything and everything they could all day and night. Everything was grist for their mill. They hated crabs and crabs hated them and it was the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s whenever the shellfish ran into each other. The lobsters were bigger, badder, and more determined than the crabs. Three of their five pairs of legs were outfitted with claws. They usually carried the day. Might makes right was their rule of thumb.

   The number one rock ‘n’ rollers among the island’s lobsters were the B-52’s. They were the house band in their part of the world. Every lobster knew the lyrics to their “Rock Lobster” song. The band had released it ten years earlier and when they did it shot up the shellfish charts, even though every single crab in the Gulf of St. Lawrence scorned it as the devil’s music.

   “We were at the beach, everybody had matching towels, somebody went under a dock, and there they saw a rock, it wasn’t a rock, it was a rock lobster!” 

   Whenever any crab heard the song, it spit sideways and cursed. They were happy to see the island’s fishing boats go after their country cousins every spring. They showed up at the island’s harbors for the blessing of the fleet on Setting Day and shouted “Godspeed!” when the boats broke the waves. There was no love lost between crabs and lobsters. “We don’t need no skunks at our lawn party,” crabs far and wide said.

   Even though lobsters could be as bad as a Hells Angel waking up on the wrong side of the bed, all they really wanted to do was eat and have fun. They were always on the move, moving in parties of twenty, fifty and even a hundred, looking for a party. They ate non-stop so as to have plenty of get up and go at whatever good time they found.

   “Havin’ fun, bakin’ potatoes,” they sang. Prince Edward Island was known as Spud Island. It was no small potatoes when it came to the tuber. It was the smallest province but the top potato producing province in the country. Everybody’s favorite way to eat lobster was boiled in the same pot with fresh corn and new potatoes.

   “Boys in bikinis, girls on surfboards, everybody’s rockin’, everybody’s fruggin’.”

   The blue and brown backed crustaceans couldn’t move fast enough to frug, but it didn’t matter. They got into the spirit of the song. They lived in harmony among themselves ten months out of the year, except when one of them happened to eat another one of them. The other two months of the year all bets were off. That’s when the island’s lobster boats went after them. That’s when the angels sang and it was every man for himself. They didn’t like it, but they had to take their lumps like everybody else.

   There were about 1200 boats on the island sailing out of 45 harbors. More than three dozen boats came out of the North Rustico harbor. Every one of the boats was out to get lobsters. Once they got them their fate was sealed. Every lobster knew it in its bones, even though all they had was an exoskeleton. Their inner selves had no bones. They were going to be boiled alive and there was nothing they could do about it.

   Traps have escape vents to let shorts leave while still on the bottom. The under-sized lobsters who overstayed their welcome were thrown back into the ocean. Egg-bearing females were also thrown back. The female carried her eggs inside of her for about a year and then for about another year attached to the swimmerets under her tail. When the eggs hatch, the larvae float near the surface for a month. The few that survive eventually sink to the bottom and develop as full-fledged and grown-up. For every 50,000 eggs spawned two lobsters survive. The rest of them feed the fish.

   Some diners sporting bibs argue that lobsters don’t have a brain and so they don’t feel pain. They have probably never seen tails shuddering like palm fronds in a hurricane when the shellfish get thrown into a pot of boiling water. They aren’t twitching to the beat of the B-52’s. Their brains might not amount to much, but they have a nervous system. They react to pain like everybody else. The hormone they release when hurt is the same one that human beings release when hurt. 

   “How about coming down here with the rest of us,” they wanted to scream from the boiling pot mosh pit. They would have screamed if they could. As it was, all they could do was click and clack.

   The Prince Edward Island fisheries considered lobster to be their crown jewel. It was a gourmet known for its juicy meat. But that was like getting the Medal of Honor when you weren’t around anymore. Who needs to bask in that kind of glory? The only consolation lobsters had was that the island’s fishermen took care to manage their resource. They didn’t pull up over many of them in their traps. They kept the surrounding waters clean as could be so there would be plenty of them year after year.

   It was small consolation though. It only meant fishermen were in it for the long haul and weren’t going to change their minds about snatching them up anytime soon. The only consolation a lobster ever got was when somebody reached for it and the lobster was able to get the outstretched hand in its crusher claw.

   “We were at a party, his earlobe fell in the deep, someone reached in and grabbed it, it was a rock lobster!”

   When that happened, there was no quarter given. The lobster was going to sell its life dear. The human hand was going to pay dearly for sticking its nose where it didn’t belong. The nose should have stayed where it was before it ever came to the island. Why didn’t they stay in the Old World? What lobsters didn’t know was that fishermen came from the same place they did. Way back when they had come from way down in the ocean. But they weren’t ever going back. The sooner lobsters got that through their thick heads the better.

   “Lots of bubble, lots of trouble, rock lobster.”

Excerpted from the book “Ebb Tide.”

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

“Ebb Tide” by Ed Staskus

“A thriller in the Maritimes, out of the past, a double cross, and a fight to the finish.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Books

Available at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CV9MRG55

Summer, 1989. A small town on Prince Edward Island. Mob money on the move gone missing. Two hired guns from Montreal. A constable working the back roads stands in the way.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication