The Lobster

by

Lauren Roberts

Many bookmarks, especially paper ones, tend to be relatively common. That is, you can often find more than one and sometimes thousands even if they are old. But some bookmarks are unique. If there are duplicates, they are so rare as to be nearly one-of-a-kind. That’s the case, I believe, with this bookmark whose upper part—the part that sticks up above the book—is that of a lobster claw. One half of the claw is brass, the other is a lovely stone. Unlike many older bookmarks that are were made to use in books that had thick paper, this one, thanks to the thinness of the part that goes into the book, is still usable today. It likely wouldn’t work in a trade paperback because the top part, the claw, is noticeably heavier than the bottom part. But in a hardcover—gorgeous! (When you look at the image above, it appears the claw part of it has colors. That is a result of the scan; the bookmark is actually solid brass, the only color variations in the stone.)

I bought this on eBay about a year ago. A woman who was divesting herself of her collection was posting three at a time. I had purchased another one from her before, but the minute I saw this one I knew I had to have it. I plotted my bid carefully. Who were my serious competitors likely to be? What were the odds any of them had this particular one? What would they pay to get it? I deliberated for days before placing a bid that translated to more than $300. But I held my breath as the bidding came down to the final minutes. Would I have to pay that?

Fortunately, no. I didn’t have to spend or come close to my maximum bid, but I will say that the final price took the wind out of my bidding sails for a while. It’s been worth it, though.

No identifying marks of any kind are visible, and the seller knew nothing about it beyond that fact that she had purchased it at a swap meet in the UK about twenty years prior. It’s a shame, really, because the workmanship is exquisite. Sometimes, while handling it, I wonder about the maker. Was it made by hand for personal pleasure? Was it to be a gift? Or was it mass produced, however small the production? I have no answers. 

Without any kind of history on this particular bookmark I am forced to fall back on a generic history of the lobster. But what a fascinating history it is. Did you know that lobsters were once so plentiful they were used  by Native Americans to fertilize their fields and as bait for fishing? In colonial times, when they could be gathered from tidal pools, lobster was considered to be poverty food good only to be fed to children, prisoners and indentured servants. In fact lobsters were the mainstay for the poor, for servants and slaves.

The lobster—the word comes from the English loppestre, thought to be a corrupted form of the Latin locusta—is a crustacean in the Decapoda order. They are characterized by their hard shells and jointed body.

Lobsters have stiff, segmented bodies which are covered by an exoskeleton, and five pairs of jointed legs, one or more of which have been modified into pincers. The rest serve as swimming legs. The lobster’s tail, allowing the lobster to propel backwards at a high rate of speed, is used in escape situations. 

Female lobsters begin to reproduce at the age of five years. The female can lay up to 80,000 eggs at one time, but only once every two years. Once born, the baby lobsters often drift and swim in the tide for up to the first five weeks of life. The survival rate is not high, but those who do survive eventually settle on the ocean floor. As they grow, they molt, shedding their shells up to twenty-five times during its first five years. After that, molting occurs approximately once per year.
 
Lobsters are scavengers, taking what food comes to them mostly carrion, clams, snails, mussels, worms and sea urchins. It locates prey with its excellent sense of smell, but its dining habits are messy. A clam, for instance, is broken open with the lobster’s large claws. Using its mouth parts and first two sets of walking legs, it then manipulates the food into its mouth, leaving a cloud of debris. As the clam slides down the lobster’s gullet, three stomachs begin the work of digestion. The first stomach is actually where the lobster’s teeth are located and it is here that the clam finally becomes mush before passing along.

When food is tight, a lobster, if desperate, will willingly eat another lobster, and that cannibalism is the reason lobsters in tanks have their claws banded. Other than humans, seals, and a few other species lobsters have few predators. They are aggressive creatures and territorial as well.

Part of the reason that they are so expensive is that it take five to seven years for a lobster to mature to legal “market size,” which is measured at 3 1/4 inches carapace-length, that is, from the eye socket to the beginning of the tail. At this size, the lobster will generally weight about 1 1/4 pounds. 

Though there are about thirty species of lobster in the world, the most familiar of which is the Maine lobster or Homarus americanus, which is actually found anywhere from the Canadian Maritimes down to North Carolina, a distance of about 1,300 miles. It is, however, most prevalent in Maine. It possesses two strong claws: a big-toothed crusher claw for pulverizing shells and a finer-edged ripper claw resembling a steak knife, for tearing soft flesh. Besides its formidable front claws, the lobster also has eight walking legs, giving it ten legs altogether.

The lobster most often crawls forward on its walking legs, but when it senses danger it can contract its tail and scoot backwards with astonishing speed. It also has the ability to “throw” a claw in the same way a lizard can drop its tail. Eventually the new fleshy “limb bud” will appear and with the next molt the lobster will deposit a skeleton on the new limb.

To those not familiar with live lobsters, their color can sometimes come as a shock. Lobsters are greenish-black on top and orange below with accents of blue on the claw joints. The reason is that a lobster’s shell is composed of red, blue, and yellow pigments. When nature misfires and one or more pigments is missing, a lobster may end up being red, blue, albino (white) or calico (dark with yellow spots), These are not common, however; blue lobsters occur once in every three to four million, and red occur once in every ten million. Excepting only the albino, all color variations turn red when they are cooked.

Lobsters continue to grow throughout their lives, though they molt less frequently as they age. This accounts for the reports that lobsters, in colonial times, could reach five to six feet long! The most recent documented record comes from 1977 when a lobster weighing forty-four pounds, six ounces, and having a length between three and four feet was caught of Nova Scotia.

Not surprisingly, that’s rare. The disdain for lobster that colonial Americans had began to give way, in the 1800s to passion. “Smackmen”—named after their boats, smacks which were small sailing vessels with holes in them to allow seawater to circulate and keep the lobsters alive—first appeared in Maine in the 1820s in order to supply the increasing demands for lobster from New York and Boston. By the 1840s, commercial fisheries in Maine were growing rapidly in order to supply worldwide demand for the crustaceans. When land transportation brought the lobster to Chicago in 1842, it spawned lobster palaces that were soon seen in most major cities. 

Unfortunately, the lobster’s popularity was also its demise. In 1885, the lobster industry was thriving. Production had reached 130 million pounds a year. Fishermen were getting the unheard of price of ten cents a lobster while customers complained of the outrageous rates of ten to twelve cents a pound that they were paying. It didn’t stop consumption, though. Within twenty years, the lobster beds were so depleted that production had dropped to thirty-three million pounds per year. 

Strict conservation methods were introduced, and production over the decades has risen again though nowhere near its original number. In a 2005 article titled “How lobster went up in the world,” in the Times, Mark Henderson noted that a recent study based on surveys of 200,000 American restaurants revealed “fluctuating prices that reflect the changing abundance of dozens of species over the past 150 years” and that “the price, adjusted for inflation, of fish and shellfish, including lobster, swordfish, oysters, halibut, haddock and sole, has climbed as stocks have collapsed.” But perhaps the most influential essay on the lobster is David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster.” Originally published in Gourmet magazine, it eventually became the title for his bestselling book. Though he shares his rather dim view of the festival (“. . . watching people slap canal-zone mosquitoes as they eat deep-fried Twinkies and watch Professor Paddywhack, on six-foot stilts in a raincoat with plastic lobsters protruding from all directions on springs, terrify their children”), his main focus is this: Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? He found his answer. It may not be everyone’s, but the essay provides considerable food for thought.

As for the claw bookmark, I can unequivocally state that no lobsters were harmed in the making of it. It’s beautiful, and exquisite piece made of brass and stone, and to my way of thinking better than any meal of lobster. 
 
Bookmark specifications: Lobster claw
Dimensions: 3 1/2" x 1/2"
Material: Brass with unknown stone
Manufacturer: Unknown
Date: Unknown
Acquired: eBay


Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.