This one lobster was quite a little fighter.

It clawed, literally, against the aluminum lip of my Crate & Barrel 32 quart stock pot. Its journey from Benson’s Fresh Fish Market and Cafe was quick, at least in terms of the trip it took from the Alaskan coasts by truck in seawater containers. Five minutes in my ’09 Lexus GS.

The crustacean was moody when I plopped it on my Corian Sunset Mist kitchen countertop. It’s appendages waved, back and forth, its claws not so much snapping as scissoring. I grabbed its tail and without much preamble began to dip it into the boiling broth of Zatarain’s Seafood Boil Mix, Whole Food organic corn ears and farm-to-table new potatoes.

I’m sure it was coincidence, but the lobster pinched the pot’s lip and clung there, even as it became submerged. It’s tail flailed once, twice. Its smaller legs treading the broth. Then it stilled and colored from a burnt umber to a vibrant rose.

But, man, it never once released the pot lip. That was the first piece of the lobster I ate.