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Lucy the Lobster's Tale of Being Captured and Then Rescued

Animal story submitted by Marlene Narrow
April 2024

This story is based on a true, heartwarming rescue by Marlene Narrow that occurred in June, 2022. Marlene rescued Lucy from a grocery store in Massachusetts and set her free in Maine. This short story was written by a friend of Lucy.

wild Lobster
Wild and free Lobster - Photo by Robert Bachand

"I was so hungry. There was nothing to eat for days and we were all lying on top of one another in the cold dark nothingness. We had been lifted from the weekly meeting where my father was speaking from the tall rock up front, warning us about the powers above. The seascape to the west had been annihilated some weeks before and we were recovering from the loss of half of our close-knit community, especially our one hundred-and-fifty-year-old Matriarch, Blue Mona.

"If the powers above strike again, if our homes are destroyed, my father was burbling, gesticulating with his warrior claw, we must try with all our might to return here and spawn the new generations with the knowledge that the Bottomdweller Warriors will persist.

"Something metal and heavy and aggressive dropped between the stage and me, down where I was hanging with my cousins and we were all lifted up, up, up to the light, with everyone screaming and running to the edges and back together. We broke through the surface of our world into somewhere blinding, loud and scary. My mother was there with her sisters and I watched a look of horror fade from her extended eyes and she calmed her rapidly waving antennae and all the elders circled about us, my still crying cousins and me, soothing us. And then we fell. I came to, nestled beside two young cousins who were clinging to me. There were murmurs in the pile, old ones consoling the young and I opened my claws across them and held them.

"Days later we were in water again, but there was no life, nothing to eat and my claws couldn't open. There were bands around our arms. I had not seen my mother again. Two aunts were still with my cousins and me, but all the uncles had been lifted out and were gone. I was getting adjusted to the light and watched the alien faces come forward hungrily, peering in, looking us over. So much greed and so little love, this world scared us, and we cowered together again even though there was some room to move about.

"A few times, as one of the aliens passed by, I could detect a faint glow of concern none of the other beings had for us and these seldom beings would pause, even reach out to the glass with their weird claws as if they understood our plight, and they appeared to pray for us. One particularly bright one hesitated in front of our water and without thinking I scuttled forward, pleading with her to save us. She had glowing bright hair wound up on top of her head and her eyes were the dry blue of the light outside our world we'd been lifted into. Our eyes locked. It understood? I cried out please I have to get back home to my father and inform him and all the Bottomdwellers that he was right, indeed, the powers above not only exist but rule our fate!

"I had never believed him, being so young, only thirty years old, and I had that morning resisted going to meeting, just wanting to play and graze. He had been so patient with me. I had to get back and apologize and help him to teach the masses.

"The bright alien faded away into the crazy distance where everything was bright colors and squares on squares and shelves of bottle things that weren't empty which had often dropped out of the blue at home. The hungry aliens went by with carts stuffed full of all the objects. Apparently, they ate anything. Gross. Maybe there was a chance. I had thought I'd heard her trying to communicate with me. A large five-tentacled claw reached in just then and took my aunts away from their children and I went back to console them, unmoving in their terror.

"The next day, the bright light came back again. She studied the sign the larger male alien had placed above our tank. We were on sale. Reduced. I thought I could almost understand her language as she spoke, and she stared down at us and I saw the other larger alien above the surface start glowing and he seeped water out his eyes. So powerful. They had been talking about me. She was going to save me, but she wasn't sure which lobster I was, so I ran toward her and we locked eyes again. There was an argument above then, and another alien was holding up two tentacles, but the man with the ocean eyes said: she was here first, and then the bright one pointed directly to me. I just had time to rush to my cousins to tell them I would be carrying our destiny forward when I was lifted out of the water and put again in a dark waterless space. Only me.

"Lucy, I whispered, telling her my name.

"Later she placed me in healing cold salt water saying here you go, Lucy, this should help, and she placed some seaweed beside me and around me and I was so excited I was beginning to believe she really knew what I needed. Soon she placed a smorgasbord in front of me, a rainbow of lovely plant parts that don't even grow in my world. She packed me carefully, talking to me the whole time then disappearing and coming back with several other light beings who gazed at me.

"I was listening to them talk of transporting me to freedom, laughing and happy. After a long time, I heard one call, Smell that, Lucy? We're almost there; and indeed, the sensors along my claws were honing in. The food and the icy water had revived me and I began to enjoy the ride, trying not to remember I still had a long journey ahead. They were listening to something they called reggae and home was getting ever closer.

"They took me out of the vehicle and lifted the lid of my container. Indeed, I'm alive, I called, and I do smell my world. They smiled over me. They carried me in the ice water onto the beach and lifted the cover again. The bright one lifted me out and I saw the surface in front of us. I looked at her and back to the sea. Then she put me back in even though I spread my claws and resisted going in. Just put me in the water, I pleaded. They covered me and then I was sloshing back and forth inside, banging my head a bit. They kept saying, further, out to the end of the rocks where it's deeper. Then everything happened quickly, the one lifted me out and the bright one cut the bands off my claws. Such relief. I was placed back into my own salty world where I felt all my senses coming back to me. I became reoriented. I wasn't as far from home as I had imagined, just a few miles north; I could get there in a few days.

"They sat above me, on dry rocks above the water, smiling and talking about me. They think I'm beautiful and remark on my bright orange and ocean colors returning to my shell. They are ugly greedy creatures, but I am so grateful to the bright shining one. I back up into a couple of rocks and send up some bubbles of love and gratitude for them. The tide is coming in and soon I will be even deeper and will have regained my strength and I will set out for home. I will tell my father and all future generations about their alien powers and skills and urge all Bottomdwellers to keep praying for them, especially for the ones who do care. I will preach to my brethren and convince even the young ones that we all still have a chance.”

Marlene Narrow is a vegan activist and founder of the enlightening Vegan Nation Radio show: "Vegan Nation is one campaign of Vegans Rising. Vegans rising represents the emerging paradigm of the embodiment of unconditional love, freedom and compassion—the foundation of Veganism. Marlene Narrow is a World Peace Diet Facilitator, and also a member of World Peace Writers—a collective of Vegan writers. Marlene received a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Sciences: Health Education.The Vegan evolution revolution has begun.”

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