Owner Is Angry His 20-Pound Lobster, Dinnah, Was Photographed by the T.S.A. - The New York Times
In the final hours of his life last weekend, he was plucked from anonymity, nestled in darkness at the bottom of an insulated cooler and given a name: Dinnah, like how a Mainer might pronounce the last meal of the day. His fate was sealed, literally, with Dinnah placed at the bottom and a layer of smaller friends on top in the cooler, which was wrapped with duct tape.
His owner, Christopher Stracuzza, a 32-year-old auto-body repairman from Savannah, Ga., wanted Dinnah, a hulking 20-pound American lobster, and another 20 pounds of more-modest crustaceans to reach their final destination peacefully. "You don't think a lobster gets stressed too?" Mr. Stracuzza said.
But the lobster's final journey, from a tank at a seafood market in Connecticut to a propane cooker in Savannah, was bumpy and controversial, and included a brush with internet celebrity. It started after Mr. Stracuzza checked in for a JetBlue flight from Boston back home on Sunday morning and placed the cooler on a conveyor belt for oversize checked luggage.
According to officials with the Transportation Security Administration, agents at Logan International Airport in Boston conducted an initial screening of the container — marked "Live Lobster!" in black marker — but still had concerns. Agents removed the duct tape and opened the cooler to take a closer look.
Lobsters and luggage are no strangers at the Boston airport. But for some reason, perhaps because T.S.A. officials were impressed by Dinnah's beefiness, a grinning agent held him by his prodigious pincers for a photo. It was shared on T.S.A. social media accounts and was soon the subject of many news stories.
By the time Mr. Stracuzza got home on Sunday afternoon, Dinnah was a celebrity and Mr. Stracuzza was just confused why his cooler was wrapped in tape labeled T.S.A. His confusion became anger when he discovered Dinnah had been removed and placed back on top of the other lobsters.
"Would you want a 500 pound person sitting on top of you?" Mr. Stracuzza said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
Mr. Stracuzza did not have much time to dwell on Dinnah's repositioning because a group of friends were waiting at his house for a cookout: $700 worth of lobster, drawn salted butter and beer. But then a friend called him.
"'Holy,'" his friend started the phone call, followed by an expletive, Mr. Stracuzza recounted. "'Your lobster is all over the internet.'"
Mr. Stracuzza's emotional state reached a new level: red-hot, steaming anger. "Just because it was labeled 'live lobster' doesn't mean there could be a bomb in there," he said. "They are dumb. They are like the dumbest people in the world."
On Monday night, the owner of the Connecticut seafood store, Lisa Feinman of Atlantic Seafood Market in Old Saybrook, who sold the lobsters to Mr. Stracuzza on Saturday, took her outrage public. In a post on the store's Facebook page, she accused the T.S.A. of dumping out the "12 other lobsters to get to this guy."
"Seriously, nothing better to do?" Ms. Feinman wrote. "And who would be to blame when these lobsters show up with a claw broken off because the T.S.A. agent doesn't know how to properly handle a lobster? Do your job and leave our personal property alone."
Michael McCarthy, a T.S.A. spokesman, said on Wednesday that agency officials had contacted Ms. Feinman to discuss the situation. "We share images through social media to provide helpful travel tips and to better inform the traveling public about T.S.A.'s mission," Mr. McCarthy said.
Back at the cookout on Sunday, Dinnah lived up to his name, joining the other lobsters on the outdoor cooker, providing tender chunks of meat for Mr. Stracuzza and his friends. They were splayed out on a table covered in newspaper, next to bowls of melted butter and cans of Bud Light.
There was so much lobster meat on Sunday that side dishes were not even considered, Mr. Stracuzza said. With pounds of meat leftover, he turned Dinnah into surf and turf on Monday night. And on Tuesday night, Dinnah was tossed with macaroni and cheese. On Wednesday night, Dinnah took the form of the classic dish made famous near the waters where he lived: lobster rolls.
Despite all the attention Dinnah received, Mr. Stracuzza said he is not crazy about colossal crustaceans. "I am more of a one-and-a-half, two-pound lobster kind of guy," he said.
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