More disoriented animals

Lobster

Okay, not quite on the scale of the poor London whale, but today Rerun (the family Cairn terrier) starts barking outside, so Dad goes out to take a look at the source of the commotion. And what do you know - at our doorstep is what seems to be a tiny little lobster or crawfish of some sort. Which is strange, because we live in Kembangan, which is quite a distance from the shoreline. Any ideas how he got here? Mum's bet is that he was being shipped to the seafood restaurants around here and he made a brave escape and found the house with a marine-conservation enthusiast.

(I'm waiting for the brother the diver to come home and explain what exactly we should do with it. If it's seawater, we'll release it back to the sea. No snarky answers about reunion dinner food, thanks.)

Here's a picture of the little guy after we put him in a pail. I feel like calling him Pinchy, in honour of the Simpsons' lobster.

Comments

Tym said…
So is this the new family pet? :)
22 January 2006 at 10:07
Daryl said…
It is quite cute :) Awaiting the brother's advice on what to do, really.
22 January 2006 at 10:10
Anonymous said…
You know me - how can I resist when it comes to fishies. :-) Looked up my Debelius book (it's a kind of encyclopaedia) on Crustacea - you can identify lobsters of the infraorder Astacidea (as opposed to the Palinuridea infraorder - the spiny lobster types with no true clues) by "the presence of chelae (pincers or claws) on the first three pairs of legs, and by the fact that the first pair is by far the largest and most robust. The last two pairs of legs end in a simple dactylus (finger) in the vast majority of species." Lobsters are, of course, decapods. Other characteristics:
- segmented bodies, even though individual segments are covered by a peripheral shell;
- two parts of a lobster's body: the cephalothorax (anterior) and the abdomen(the posterior);
- appendages; and
- two pairs of antennae.

I'm not sure, however, how you distinguish between a true lobster and a crayfish (freshwater lobster). Debelius, um, doesn't do freshwater critters. I suppose you've kept him in freshwater - well, I suppose if he dies soon enough we'll know. :-)

I'm kidding, of course. Keep us updated!
22 January 2006 at 10:46
Han said…
give him a hot bath, like Homer did for Pinchy!
22 January 2006 at 12:15
Anonymous said…
that is so cute (i know lobsters are not supposed to be cute but it does look cute in the pail). i was just thinking of getting a goldfish just because its the only pet allowed on residence but then i realised they were relly ugly.

i wish something cute would appear in front of my door too.
23 January 2006 at 20:21
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Verbal agreement

From a Grauniad Guardian article on James Dyson , inventor of the dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner: He still has one major ambition. To become a verb, in the same way that Hoover - or, as he puts it, "the alternative" - has done. I suggest to him that people are already using his product but still saying they are "hoovering". He smiles. "I don't think they'll be doing that for long," he says. That struck me as unusual - it's very rare for a firm's leader to say that he wants his product to become a verb. Lots of other companies like TiVo and Google have tried desperately to avoid their name becoming a verb, for fear of the name becoming so generic that the trademark gets diluted. But then, the Languagehat archives seem to show (see comment near the bottom) that Dyson's big on turning his name into a verb. *** Sadly, due to its distinct lack of vowels, the chances of "sng" becoming a verb seem close to zero, regardless of whate
Read more

Dog blogs, plus the I look like my dog "contest"

Image
I've just discovered Puptastic , another dog blog, and learnt the following disturbing facts: 1. The dog most likely to eat you when you're dead is the Dachshund. Beware the hot dog! 2. Some people look a lot like their dogs . A lot. But only if they own pedigrees . Actually, I've heard about this study for a long time - it made its rounds on the Net a while back. It's a selection thing. Anyway, the post had a link to pictures of what they claimed was a "I Look Like My Dog" contest (urban legend alert - I think it's more likely to be just a series of regular Cesar ads), including this one: Update: some quick Googling shows that the idea that this is a dog-resemblance contest is almost certainly not true. Presumably the "winners of the 'I Look Like My Dog' contest line was meant to be facetious, but people have taken it seriously. In reality, these were ads done by ALMAP/BBDO Sao Paulo that won some Gold awards at the 2000 Cannes Lions ( thi
Read more