What has that to do with the topic? There are plenty of Maine lobsters in California restaurants. I merely offered one possible explanation for someone misidentifying the brooch in the OP.
So which image of a lobster is more common in California? (If there’s any real way to know.)
I think most people have the image of a North Atlantic lobster with big claws. But I can understand a decorative item identified as a scorpion. The primary image people have of lobsters is the red color, even though that only occurs after cooking. I can’t say what people on West coast would think a spiny lobster looks like, most people only see the tails. I’m sure whole spiny lobsters are sold somewhere, but I’ve never seen one outside of an aquarium, and those were very small.
Ah, I didn’t think about the color. Maybe that has something to do with it.
It’s also one reason why we import Maine lobsters in the first place: more meat.
Nevertheless, even people who’ve grown up here are sometimes surprised to learn that California lobsters don’t have claws. (As a kid, I always felt sorry for them.) So I don’t know. Probably the brooch just didn’t look like the Red Lobster sign.
I live in Texas. I grew up here. However, my father’s family was in New England, and one of his brothers had a few lobster pots. On one family vacation, this uncle caught a few lobsters, and it was decided that the family would have an old fashioned seafood feast. My parents and my grandma Bodoni were in charge of transporting the lobsters in one of those styrofoam coolers. I was in the back seat, with the lobsters between me and Grandma.
There was no lid to this cooler, and the lobsters kept trying to crawl out. Keep in mind that I was a pre-schooler. I was terrified of those huge monsters with the scary scary claws. Grandma just kept pushing them back into the cooler. She was a fisherman’s wife, and was used to dealing with all sorts of sealife that didn’t want to become seafood.
Yes, I know exactly what Maine lobsters look like.
I grew up in Los Angeles. When I was around six years old, my Dad went to Boston on business and brought back a couple of live lobsters in a cooler. When my younger sister and I came back from school, they were in the bath tub waiting to become dinner. Sis and I were fascinated by them. Dad named them Herman and Sherman and it still comes up as a joke from time to time.
Yeah, I know what they look like. They look just like scorpions, right?
Maybe I should have replied this way; I was born and bred in Southern California and know what a Maine lobster looks like. I also know what a spiny or rock lobster as well as various scorpions look like. I don’t really know what the brooch in the OP looks like so can not say whether or not I would misidentify it. Most likely I would have thought it a lobster however.
Except for the tails. Scorpion tails don’t have much meat in them.
So it wasn’t red? Then yeah, I would have guessed scorpion also.
I’m looking for an image, and this is the closest I could find. Hers was a lot more silvery.
I live in Montreal (central/eastern Canada) and I see live lobsters in supermarkets, so I know what they look like.
That’s a lobster. The lady you met just comes across a lot of stupid people.
What makes you think I was responding to your post?
Maybe so. Yeah, I don’t see how it could be interpreted any other way.
And maybe just one or two people said that to her, and she inflated it to “everyone.”
In as much as it was not directed towards anyone in particular I opted to respond. Is that a problem?
That picture does a disservice to both lobsters and scorpions. That’s because it’s a crayfish.
Pacific Spiny Lobsters taste like Maine lobsters, only about two or three times better.
By far Atlantic Lobster with big claws are more common in California. You see them in the tanks of seafood restaurants and super markets. Occasionally you will see Pacific lobsters on the menu but it is specifically indicated that it is Pacific lobster.