SUN JOURNAL • February 15, 2025
The Lewiston Evening Journal detailed in 1895 a battle between fishermen and an 'enraged' supersize lobster. Elmer Staples said on a sunny September day in 1895 he was fishing in a dory off Newfoundland and the cod were biting. A hundred yards away, two other men – Nova Scotians Tom Massey of Pictou and a fellow named Reed from Antigonish – were doing the same. Staples heard a yell and looked over at the other boat in time to see it “lurch as if someone was climbing over the side.” He saw Massey hanging on for dear life while Reed was swinging an oar at “a great, green slimy-looking thing that was waving his long feelers above his head. We saw that the object was a huge lobster” with Massey’s right arm held fast “in one of its horrid claws. Fully three feet in length,” it seized the side of the boat with its pincer “and broke it out like paper. Reed seized a pike axe “and gave it a terrible jab in the back of the neck” that caused the creature to let go. “I hope…that I may never see or experience the like again,” Staples said.