Crustacean Compassion?

1 This is God's wondrous world,

and to my listening ears

all nature sings, and round me rings

the music of the spheres.

This is God's wondrous world;

I rest me in the thought

of rocks and trees, of skies and seas,

God's hand the wonders wrought.

When we arrived in outport Newfoundland from Toronto 46 years ago the practical acts of kindness to the new minister and his wife soon began. It came in the form of edibles (not those edibles), everything from fish to moose to rabbits to berries and jam. We were willing to try just about anything but the most unsettling gift was live lobsters. We may have indulged in "surf and turf" once but we discovered that living creatures into boiling water was not for the faint of heart -- shades of Annie Hall. Ruth has a vivid memory of putting the lid on the pot with relief only to have it pushed off by a large claw. 

This morning I recalled our lobster queasiness as I heard on the news the effects on Canada's lobster fishery from a growing movement in Europe. Several countries have already or are considering bans on cooking live lobsters because it is a form of cruelty to animals. In Britain there is an organization called Crustacean Compassion and I must admit I guffawed when I heard the name.

Yet I realize that during my lifetime attitudes toward other creatures has changed, often dramatically. We regard our companion animals differently and cruelty can be a chargeable crime. We have laws about the treatment of the livestock we eat and have restricted the use of animals for testing of products and experimentation for medical procedures. This is all important and what I think most of us would consider progress.

                                                            Saturday Night Live Skit 1982

As Christians we recognize that we are people of a Creator God who brought call living things into being and in our United Church we affirm that we are called to "live with respect in Creation." While we may readily agree that this applies to Fluffy the Llasa Apso, do we share this conviction about Larry the Lobster? 

When Kristi Noem, former Governor of North Dakota, and now former ICE Barbie, admitted in her biography that she'd shot a supposedly untrainable pet dog named Cricket many people were appalled. Did her callousness toward this hound contribute to the hardness of heart she demonstrated toward undocumented immigrants as her minions hunted them down in communities across the United States?

I have never seriously considered becoming a vegetarian or vegan, although I respect those who've made this choice. As an outdoors guy I won't alter my slaughter of mosquitoes and blackflies. And I will never be a card-carrying member of Crustacean Compassion. Still, as we become increasingly aware of the decline of biodiversty and species extinction we probably have a lot more to learn about compassion toward all the critters in God's Wondrous World. 

This is the end of my tale...tail? Anyone want to write a lobster hymn? 

                                                                 Scenes from Annie Hall -- 1977