Rare Lobster Gets Stay of Execution

It pays to be different. Employees at a Hollywood, Florida Red Lobster restaurant noticed there was something off about one lobster that came in for dinner, because it wasn’t in fact red. The rare bright-orange lobster was too strange to boil alive and eat, so the staff called Ripley’s Aquarium of Myrtle Beach to rescue the flashy crustacean.

They gave the weirdo a name, Cheddar, because no marketing opportunity shall go unexploited. (In case you hadn’t heard of Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits ™, now you have.) But at least Cheddar now has a forever home at the aquarium, “where she can be enjoyed by many for years to come, all from the safety of her tank,” according to Red Lobster spokesperson Nicole Bott.

About one in 30 million lobsters are orange, but red lobsters in the wild are also rather rare. A lobster’s natural color is a muddy, brownish green; they only turn red when cooked. The orange guys lack the protein that would give them the typical muddy color, so they present a distinctly carotenoid pigment.

Rare lobsters can come in orange, yellow, red, blue, white (albino) or even calico or “split,” with the specimen evenly divided between normal muddy and bright orange. These rarities do not blend in with their surroundings as well as normal lobsters and so are more exposed to predators, which might explain the rarity.

“Sometimes ordinary miracles happen, and Cheddar is one of them,” effused Mario Roque, the Red Lobster manager who led the rescue effort. Roque then resumed the systematic killing of unassuming, normal-colored creatures.

Photo credit: Red Lobster