I took a life

I took a life. I watched the energy drain from a living thing until it stopped moving, stopped being and was gone. I am not proud. I don't want to do it again. Before I did it I cried and suggested that we set the creature free, but my boyfriend told me that he was not made of lobster money and that we had to get over our desire to introduce to the wild the lobster that he had chosen from a tank at our local asian market, put him in a pot and steam him for 30 minutes with ginger and baby spring onions.

A chef had suggested that we put the crawling, clawing bottom dweller into a steamer and wait, but we wanted to get it over with quickly, to minimise the pain the creature would feel. The difficulty was that, as we watched our little clawed friend try to lift the stopper on our kitchen sink, I was sorely tempted to give him a name - such a feisty little creature should surely have a name. Only, if you name you dinner, it can be very hard to consume it later. So we decided not to deepen our bond with our crustacean and instead, debated who would put him in the pot.

I must admit that I felt my eyes well up as we discussed how we would cook the lobster, who was then lifting himself up on his claws and scratching around the sink. Eventually, I agreed to be the one to lift our little friend into his last resting place, but when it came to it I couldn't do it and instead held the lid of the pot open, and then closed as the lobster shook in shock when he came in contact with the bubbling water. I had imagined that he would die quickly, but it was a lengthy process. It was awful. Our lobster shook and rattled in the heat and I desperately wanted to free him, only by then it would have been too late, he had already turned the colour of deepest sunburn.

I must admit that our dinner was delicious. Once the lobster was cooked, I had no problems with eating his meat. However, even as we were falling asleep last night, my boyfriend and I expressed our horror at the cruelty of the process.

It is one thing to eat a piece of fish or chicken that is already dead, but the emotional impact of watching it slow and then freeze once the body has been emptied of all life energy is powerful. I'm not sure that I will ever eat lobster again. It's too traumatic to cook a creature that you are tempted to christen and release to the sea.