Dog Days of Summer

The weather has been great. 95 degrees today. We camped over the weekend in Bar Harbor with the Lowe family, a great time of camping, hiking the Bee Hive in Acadia National Park, lobster and fresh sugar and gold corn, blue berry pancakes. Perfect...

The Boss told me a story today about waterfront justice. He had noticed some lobsters missing from his tank room. Stealing is a serious charge down here, but is happens... not infrequently. And, like everything else, they have their own way of dealing with it. It is, after all, the waterfront and they have their own code of conduct and retribution.

He came around the corner from the dock and spied a long haired wino wearing a long coat standing beside the tank looking furtively back and forth as he snagged lobsters from the tank and stuffed them under his coat. The Boss quietly moved in behind him and when the wino bent over to grab another lobster, he grabbed him by the back of his collar and drove his head into the tank where he held him, flopping like a fish for an undetermined length of time.

When he finally pulled him out, drenched with water dripping off the end of his nose, he grabbed him by the front of his coat and pulled him close to his face. He said the wino made excellent eye contact, never wavering as the Boss told him in no uncertain terms to "never, ever come in this lobster shop again" (expletives deleted). The wino nodded his head, never broke eye contact and said, "Fair enough". End of story

We worked up a load of fresh herring today. They were small and a goodly number worked their way through the flights of the conveyor and washed down the drain holes into the ocean. The seagulls flocked and 3 harbor seals circled just off the dock. We began to throw them shovels full of tasty, fresh, bite sized fish and they put on a tremendous show diving and weaving, snagging herring at every turn. We offered them salted fish as well but they never ate one.

Great day despite the heat. As one lobsterman said, "We're gonna miss this in February..."