One-In-30,000,000 Lobster Rescued from Restaurant

Thought Question: What would you do if you found a rare or unusual animal?

One wouldn’t expect a lobster's life to be saved at a Red Lobster restaurant. But that’s exactly where one of the rarest lobsters ever found was rescued last week.  

Lobsters come in a range of colors. Most are some version of brown. After they are boiled, they take on the red hue that gives the restaurant its name. One in every two million lobsters sports a vibrant blue shell. But how rare is a lobster with a basketball-orange shell?    

“Everybody knows the blue lobsters because they make such headlines and they’re so brilliant in color," Kendra Kastendieck told USA Today. She’s the manager of the Red Lobster where the orange lobster was delivered. "The orange ones are one in 30 million. So we thought that was extra cool,” she said.  

The brightly colored lobster was first seen by dishwasher Jose Romero. As soon as he saw it, he scooped it from the tank and set it safely aside. The restaurant’s owners, along with the staff, decided such a rare creature didn’t belong on a dinner plate.   

They named the creature “Crush” after the vaunted “Orange Crush” defense of the 1970s Denver Broncos football team. They then reached out to Denver’s Downtown Aquarium, which snapped up the lobster in short order. On July 17, Crush moved into his new digs. He now has his own tank, plenty of food, and not a boiling pot in sight.  

“We are thrilled to be able to share this very rare and extraordinary animal with the community and visitors to Colorado,” Ryan Herman told USA Today. He's the curator of the Downtown Aquarium.

Photo of an orange lobster from Wikimedia Commons courtesy of Jiaqian AirplaneFan.