Thanks, Typo. I feel pretty comfortable sticking my hand in the disposal! But I also discovered that I can unplug this one easily, so that's good.

disposals

something else to add to the pro column for moving.

A lengthy comedy of tragic errors later, we had to boil it because nothing I could do to it would make it die.

Lobster have some kind of crazy primitive nervous system which means that they can feel pain even after being cut up, or so says David Foster Wallace. [link] That's why it wouldn't say die.

something else to add to the pro column for moving.

Indeed.

Lobester have some kind of crazy primitive nervous system which means that they can feel pain even after being cut up

Though "feel pain" is a debatable term for a creature without a frontal cortex. Lobsters flail if you try to kill them, but that doesn't mean they have emotions. (Hey, let's get into a philosophical argument over the definition of pain! Or not.)

I've only ever boiled lobsters, and the method I was taught (and the one used by my Mainer neighbors) was just to drop them into the pot alive and close the lid. You can stab them in the head with a chef's knife first if the sound of flailing lobsters in the pot bothers you, but it's really more for the cook's comfort than the food.

My sister-in-law's ex-husband once chased me around with a live lobster, because he was a dick (I was eighteen and a little uncomfortable about the snapping claws). I still ate it, even though it would have been more satisfying if his head had wound up in the pot.

My dad isn't a vegetarian by any stretch, but after years spent on his grandmother's farm watching chickens being killed, he won't watch any kind of horror movie.

I need to install a disposal. Cleaning the drain strainer gets old.

I got the stupid garbage folk today. They ignored my recycling. OK, so I don't have a yellow bucket. But I'm not required to! It just has to be marked recycling. Which mine is. I swear. Morons.

The recipe I was trying to follow was from Fanny Farmer, if memory serves. I tried to sever everything between the head and the thorax (I know I'm getting the terminology wrong) and the thing was leaking fluid all over the place, but it wouldn't stop moving no matter where I ended up sticking the knife. And Colin was just being a bastard, taunting me with my failure to be expeditious. Some gratitude for free lobster. Every time I thought I'd succeeded and it could be prepared for grilling he managed to stimulate it back to waving at us. At least he got trapped holding the next one as it tried to snap at him while I answered the phone. There was a whole lot of shrieking going on.

In the end we boiled them, but we did consider freeing them in the St Laurent first. And then decided that was a fate worse than either death or dismemberment on my kitchen counter.

Sue, thanks for linking that. Very interesting article.

Speaking of being consumed alive...I think Oz is tenderizing me again. Making biscuits on me, followed by licking.

My mother used to chase me with Lobster all the time. But then when I was very weee, I used to love watching her skin rabbits.