What the shell

Ask any stranger you might meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, or Auckland, New Zealand, or Albuquerque, New Mexico "what is Baltimore famous for?" and after they mention Johns Hopkins Hospital and University and rampant street crime, they will know us for our crabmeat.

Even in a summer when a dozen steamed crabs will put a $90 dent in your wallet, we throng to crabhouses to crack 'em or enjoy 'em in crabcakes, fried hard crabs, or crab fluffs (remember them?)

So you have to hand it to the PETA people, the people for the ethical treatment of animals, people clad in rubber shoes and hemp belts, eating watercress sandwiches on 37-grain bread for lunch with plant-based mayonnaise.

These are the people who shut down the circus because of the elephants, and got Nabisco to get new paintings for their animal cracker boxes, showing uncaged beasts roaming the earth in search of humans to eat.

Turn about is fair play, right? We eat animals, they eat us, but in the animal kingdom there exists no AETH - Animals for the Ethical Treatment of Humans - movement. Any creature from mosquito to crocodile sees us as lunch, dinner, or a post-prandial snack.

I bring all this up because PETA has now launched a billboard advertising campaign near some of the best crabhouses in town. It's near the Inner Harbor, and it is not getting many thumbs up on social media.


“Just like humans, crabs feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said, without explaining how many crabs have ever told her so. “PETA’s billboard aims to give Charm City residents some food for thought about sparing sensitive marine animals the agony of being boiled alive or crushed to death in fishing nets simply by going vegan.”

A local tv station interviewed Nick Lentis, owner of the Silver Moon II restaurant, and he says the billboard is hurting his business.

“I don’t have nothing to do with this. I sell crab meat,” Lentis said. “I think they have to remove it.”

In September, Baltimore will celebrate their annual seafood festival, and PETA plans to keep the billboard up through that time.

They say crabs are sensitive...Some years ago, on the fishing pier in Ocean City, a crab attached himself to me by grabbing the sole of my Sperry TopSider with his pincer. I found this insensitive of him, and I mentioned this to his cousin that night over dinner, if he could hear me with all that Old Bay on him.