My place in the family Price has been to serve a large healthy Christmas dinner gathering all around my large dining room table. This year it has changed. My family decided to take a cruise all around the island of Tahiti. My choice was to stay home and be the emergency person just in case any or the family pets need help. I woke up and decided to make up a special meal for my resident two black cats. My old girl Emma is 23 years old and every year we celebrate her extended age. I have in the past made up some beef, non-fat tiny meat balls and I headed off to the super market for the meat.
There was one customer in front of me and I realized that the butcher was trying to put a large live lobster in a net and the lobster was not cooperating. The poor thing must have realized his doom and put up a battle. He put up a fight. Finally snared they brought him up to the scale that was right in front of me. I wanted to turn away but I was fixated on the poor bastard. He looked at me for help. What could I do? I thought about throwing him in my purse but he was too big and what would I do with him as I am no where near the Pacific Ocean. They got his weight and the butcher took him in the back room where I assumed he would be killed. Nope! They tied him to a plastic dish and wrapped him in cellophane. She put him on the counter where he gave me a sad look that said “goodbye.”
There is nothing in my DNA that claims I’m a hunter. I swim in the YMCA pool every day and I clear the top of the water of any bees that got water on their wings and would have drowned without help. I’ve done this for years. I also rescue black cats when people pick them up on Halloween. But this Christmas will always be in my memory of that poor lobster being taped to a plastic plate waiting to be dropped in a pot of water as it slowly gets heated up. The butcher felt sad too as he had given the lobster the name of St. Nick.
I hate Christmas as it does terrible things to my imagination.
