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See the 20-pound lobster now!

By Heather Holland
for The Brooklyn Paper

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Yes, there’s a massive lobster at a Dyker Heights restaurant!

And here’s the even more surprising news: No one is putting on a bib or melting butter.

That’s because the owners of Halu Japanese restaurant on 13th Avenue have decided to do what lobster lovers would say is the unthinkable: return the colossal crustacean to the wild.

“He’s my little boy,” owner Gina Ng said of the massive mollusk that she named “Craig.”

“I think we’ve developed a kind of bond.”

Seeing Craig in his tank is like seeing a post-nuclear horror film. Its claws are bigger than a baby. Its tail is longer than a Golden Retriever’s.

Great. So how come we can’t eat?

Ng said that Craig won’t ever make it to the menu because she heard of a similarly huge lobster at a restaurant in Manhattan that ended up being “saved” by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Ng reached out to PETA, which will pick up Craig on Tuesday and repatriate him in the icy Atlantic.

How did Craig get so big? It’s not a science experiment gone awry, but merely a result of the natural aging process. Lobsters grow one pound every seven years — but few specimen make it past a few years old before a human (or other predator) takes advantage of natural selection.

Brooklyn Bridge Realty

If the one-pound-for-every-seven-years rule is true, Craig is 140 years old.

OK, maybe he deserves his retirement.

©2009 Community Newspaper Group

→Prospect Heights: Stoop drinker wins his case — but on a technicality!

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