Worst Gift Ever

Not all surprises are good surprises.

What could this be? Did someone hack into my Amazon account?

It was such a beautiful afternoon. I’d been writing mindless sponsored content articles in my dining room, occasionally glancing out onto my lovely garden which was buzzing with pollinators. I’d rounded out my work day with a long stroll around the neighborhood with my sweet pup. As Sophie and I took our daily constitutional, I fantasized about the evening’s dinner… a fresh pesto pasta with colorful veggies from the farmers market would be perfect. In this reverie I was pouring myself a glass of cold sauvignon blanc and cuing up all 12 seasons of “Vera” on Britbox. A relaxing evening lay ahead.

As pup and I rounded the corner from our walk, I could see a large box sitting on my front porch. I didn’t remember ordering anything, nor was there a holiday or birthday lurking in the near future. Surely this was a mis-delivery. As I approached the porch, I could see the shipping label clearly bore my name and had a return address from Galveston, Texas, but no company name was shown. What the hell was this, I wondered.

I brought the box into the kitchen and proceeded to hack it open with a paring knife. Inside was a big chunk of styrofoam, but still no packing slip or any other indication of what lay in wait. I pulled out the styrofoam and beneath were layers of cold, damp newspaper accompanied by a strong smell of the ocean. WTAF. I could not imagine what this could be, especially with that wonky smell. Was this a practical joke?

Cautiously I pulled back the layers of newspaper and then suddenly, like a scene from Alien, there appeared two creatures. They clambored over one another upon seeing the light of day, then proceeded to move wildly about. Holy shit! Live lobsters! And they were HUGE.

Welcome to my house lobster guy. Sorry about that stupid styrofoam coffin. 😳

Not sure if I screamed or was swearing profusely, but whichever it was, it was enough to get my chihuahua barking madly and to wake my daughter from her late afternoon nap. Ellie came in, yelling “What the fuck mom?! Who sent those?!” Hell if I knew.

Fortunately these critters had their pincer and crusher claws done up with rubber bands, which only barely kept me from a full-on freak out. Using my index finger and thumb, I picked up each lobster in the center of its thorax and gingerly put them in the sink, holding them as far away from my body as possible as I crossed the kitchen floor. The sensation of their antennas touching my hand and forearm was a really bad sort of tickle.

The lobsters were creepy, like massive spiders, yet I couldn’t imagine killing them. They were pleading with me with their eyes and making small, sad noises. I got sucked into their vortex of agony and fear and began to feel very sorry for them. A sick feeling developed in the pit of my stomach.

Making eye contact.

They made sad little noises like this.

Once the lobsters were safely in the sink, I pulled out the rest of the packaging and the ice packs and lo and behold… there in the bottom of the box was the packing slip, instructions for the care and COOKING of the lobsters and a little note from my boss Ed, thanking me for all my hard work this year. Not in the box: a defibrillator. Somehow I was going to have to calm myself down.

So I poured a glass of sauvignon blanc both for myself and my daughter and stood as far away from the sink as possible. Out of sight, out of mind, right? NOT. Their little feelers were still peeking out from the sink’s edge and I could hear them scraping about. Clearly I was going to have to skip my pesto pasta fantasy and Britbox binge. How could I stand at the counter chopping veggies with my new friends in view and miserable in the sink? My appetite had vanished. All I could think of was how I was going to care for these creatures. I had no clue what one does for a lobster, none whatsoever. So El and I sat on the couch and starting googling.

First we had the thought to make our own salt water and keep them in the utility sink on the porch. Nope… it was suggested that would surely kill them. Then we considered grabbing In-N-Out Burgers for dinner and driving to the coast to release them into the ocean. What the hell, make an evening of it, enjoy the sunset. El calculated how long it would take for us to drive to the coast and determined it would be dark by the time we arrived. Goat’s Rock Beach would be closed. Further googling suggested that was a bad idea any how, as lobsters from Maine were not likely to survive in the warmer waters off the California coast. It would be an altogether foreign environment to them. Trip to the beach: cancelled.

Turns out this was not a viable option.

The big question then became how much time did these critters have to live? Based on The Lobster Guy’s brochure, overnighted lobsters could only survive about 12 hours after they were delivered and that was if they were kept cold and remained tucked into their Maine-ocean-water drenched newspapers. Got it! It took me about two seconds to clear off the whole top shelf in the fridge, wrap those guys back up in their newspapers (who even prints newspapers in this day and age?), return them to a somewhat smaller box, secure that with duct tape, put them on the shelf, then shut the friggin’ fridge door. Done. Now they were definitely out of sight. What a relief. I took a breath, polished off my sauv blanc, then set to figuring out what I was going to do next. Clearly my evening was shot.

So Ed, hate to digress, but I’m guessing you didn’t read this important bit of information from The Lobster Guy website. May I refer you to line 3 (see below): “Please make sure the recipient knows when their lobster gift is arriving! We want this to be a great experience for them.” Also noting their comment that “we cannot be responsible if the recipient is away or on vacation.”

ALWAYS good to read the fine print, I say.

Now that would really be a super unpleasant surprise, coming home from a retreat at the Esalen Hot Springs in Big Sur to find this mysterious box with no labels on the front stoop. I’m imagining a scene a bit like the time in The Godfather when Jack Woltz wakes to find a horse head in his bed. Lucky for you and me, I was right in Napa. But then again I never, ever leave Napa, so maybe there wasn’t really any risk, eh?

Horse head scene from The Godfather. Maybe don’t watch this clip if you’re just sitting down to dinner.

Obviously whatever I was going to do with the lobsters wasn’t something I could sleep on. I had 12 hours to kill/cook them or they would die of natural causes and after that happened, it would be unsafe to eat them. To be clear… if I didn’t cook them that evening, either I would have to eat both lobsters for breakfast the next day (like at 5:00 a.m. 😳) or toss their uncooked DEAD bodies into the garbage shortly thereafter. No matter how you sliced it, the lobsters were going to be dead. My choice was to either cook them and eat them NOW or let them die in the fridge and then stink up my garbage bin for the rest of the summer. I had my answer. No pesto pasta for me tonight.

Help me!!!!

Now what? I had frankly NEVER cooked lobster. Yes, I’d eaten fresh cooked lobster at restaurants and had purchased it in cans (which truth be told I really like), but being removed from the cooking process had kept me blissfully ignorant of the throwing living creatures into boiling water aspect of lobster consumption.

Don’t knock this if you haven’t tried it. It’s pretty yummy and the lobster screams are sealed inside.

So back to Google I went, looking for the most humane way to cook these crustaceans. There weren’t any. OMG!!!! I was never meant to be in this predicament! Ed! It became abundantly clear I was going to have to do that barbarous thing: cook those babies alive. I could hardly fathom it. On the other hand I couldn’t fathom them slowly suffocating in the fridge overnight. The path forward was clear and unequivocal. I set a pot of water to boil and watched this video…

If these kids can do, I can do it, right? OMG.

I followed lobster guy’s instructions to a tee (after consuming a couple more glasses of Dutch courage) and when the cooking was done and I had endured the terrible last words/noises of those poor creatures, I had a most WONDERFUL meal. Truly delicious. And Ellie wouldn’t even touch her lobster, so that made two for me.

THANK YOU ED, you jerk. Let’s talk about doing a smoked turkey next year.