Rare Yellow Lobster Spared From Dinner Table at NYC Restaurant
Ruby, a 1-in-30-million crustacean, is now on display at the eatery.
— -- A New York City restaurant has granted a reprieve to a special yellow crustacean after discovering that the little lobster was a 1-in-30-million find.
Ruby the lobster somehow found her way into the biweekly shipment of live lobsters to the Manhattan restaurant Burger & Lobster.
"We couldn't help but notice her," the U.S. director of operations for Burger & Lobster, Steven Costello, told ABC News today, "and that one of these things was not like the others."
He said of Ruby's unusual pigmentation, "She is like a ruby red color. She looks almost like a cooked lobster."
After poking around online, Costello said they discovered that Ruby is categorized as a yellow lobster, despite having a more orange hue.
That's when they found out that Ruby was a "1 in 30 million" lobster, according to the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine.
Costello said the staff took a liking to Ruby, and he described her as "healthy, feisty and happy."
She will be on display at the restaurant until she's transferred to her forever home at the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, New York.
He added that Ruby's personality, as well as her looks, makes her unique.
"Most lobsters are fairly docile," Costello said, adding that Ruby is quite "feisty" and probably has to fight off a lot of "male suitors."
Rare lobsters seem to pull at the heartstrings in unique ways. An especially hefty lobster, Larry, which tipped the scales at at a whopping 15 pounds, was recently spared from the dinner plate at a seafood restaurant in Florida. Unfortunately, Larry passed away en route to a better life at an aquarium.
Earlier this month, a Massachusetts lobsterman caught a bright blue lobster off Cape Cod and separated him from the haul heading to the market, hoping to send the unusual find, since named Bleu, to a local aquarium.
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