Save Bubba!

News sources report today that "Bubba" the giant 22-pound lobster will avoid a headfirst plunge into a (very big) pot of boiling water. Instead he will spend the rest of his long, lobstery life in the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum display, then again, maybe the pot's not such a bad fate after all.

Bubba with an unlucky (and much smaller) cousin

While Bubba engaged the sympahty of the Pittsburgh fishmonger who bought him, People for Eating Tasty Animals made a lucrative offer for Bubba's appearance at a testimonial dinner in his honor, featuring him undoubtedly dripping in drawn butter. This PETA is not to be confused with PETA, the anti-eating tasty animals activist groupl, the veggie PETA's would prefer that Bubba be released back out into his natural habitat, the Atlantic Ocean.

Not to be dissuaded, fishmonger Bob Wholey commuted Bubba's death sentence to life without parole.

Although his business is to sell seafood, Wholey says Bubba was never bound to be boiled and buttered. And he's become a little philosophical after seeing the lobster, which could be twice his 54 years. "I don't think you could eat something that big. ... What range of emotions does a lobster have? Greed? Lust? Love? I'm just going to give him to the zoo and hope he lives another 100 years," Wholey said.

Professional fish murderer, Wholey needs to do a little more research. As every regular reader of The Idiom, knows, lobsters have no real brain and hence feel no real pain. Their emotional range is non-existent, narrower even than Keanu Reeves' acting ability. So if Bubba was in fact fated to become a supersized serving of Bubba Thermidor, it wouldn't hurt him. Bubba's super size does not make the ethical dilemma of boiling and eating him any order of magnitude greater, he's still just a really big bug.

Nonetheless, kudos to Bubba for avoiding capture for nearly a century.