Wrangler Dani

I promised myself I would write about something of value today, something besides marketing-speak or Facebook-talk or blather about Tabatha Takes Over and how everyone who’s ever thought about running a business needs to be watching that show, holy cow.

However, when I sat down write this meaningful piece that I was sure would bubble forth, nothing came. So, here’s how to catch a lobster:

First, go out to the pier in the dead of night with a couple of scruffy men, some dead fish, all your courage and a thermos of hot chocolate. The colder it is, the more lobster-catching street cred you earn.

Look at your lobster hoop with high-tech headlamps and some slight concern about the effectiveness of this contraption. Chop up the dead fish and put it in the bottom of the hoop, making sure it smells disgusting and delicious to the bottom-dwelling spiders that we pay $24/lb for in the store.

Lower the hoop off the pier, making sure that it touches the ocean floor but doesn’t have enough slack to get in a mess. Move quickly to insure that the blurry night-time photos keep their exciting Instagram-esque patina.

Wait about 10 minutes, and haul the hoop back up.

If you’ve caught something, you have to make sure it’s a lobster, and some other scary sea creature.

If you have caught some other critter, wave it around gleefully in front of your scruffy man-friends and your wife, happy over your discovery. Then give it the thrill-ride of its life back over the rail of the pier and into the water below, following it with the lobster hoop and wishes for better luck next time.

On the next pull, if you do find a lobster in your hoop, you have to measure to make sure it’s legal, and it has to do its best to scramble around on its scary legs and freak everybody out.

See? Scary.

If it’s a legal lobster, you plunk him in a bucket and take him home. Once home, you will have to pull unspeakable things out of the lobster at the kitchen sink, and your wife will probably not love it. However, after the painful part is over, you get to melt a pound of butter over a delicious lobster tail that only cost a few cold hours and a couple of dead fish instead of $24.