A truck driver who swerved to avoid a deer on a Nova Scotia highway managed to avoid hitting the animal but ended up spilling 40,000 pounds of live lobsters on the highway in the process.
The accident occurred at around 1:00 a.m., but at noon the next day the ground was still “carpeted” according to nearby residents. “It was amazing how many lobster there were,” Vicki Grant, who has a cottage nearby, told the CBC. “There were parts that were just carpeted down through the ditch, and I would have got there a good 12 hours after it happened.”
We all know lobster is expensive (this particular shipment was estimated to be worth approximately $500,000), and so many onlookers took the accident as an opportunity to score some free lobster, filling up trash bags with the animals. Some onlookers reported that the RCMP, who appeared on the scene the help clean up, said that people could take what they wanted, though the RCMP has said this did not happen. But whether the police condoned the behaviour or not, plenty of people ended up scavenging the accident site.
It took until 6:00 p.m. the to collect all the spilled crustaceans.
“Some people had their kids further off in the ditch kind of scrambling around trying to get the good ones. It was quite a scene,” Grant said. “The lobster looked, I mean they were good, fat, previously healthy looking lobster.”
The driver was not injured in the accident (though sadly the same can’t be said of many the lobsters).
