ESCAPE FROM BONDAGE? NOT QUITE. Crazed American lobsters invade Swedish waters, but they’re hobbled by rubber bands on their claws.

"Å titta, en amerikansk. Partår du svenska?"
(Translation, "Oh look, an American. Do you speak Swedish?")

While Americans fret over whether we should build a wall between our southern border and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it, Sweden may be coming up with some wall problems of its own. Sea wall problems, that is.

Seems that 32 American lobsters have been caught swimming in Swedish waters, reports the AP. Precisely how they got there isn’t at all clear. Some believe they were “liberated” from a steamy death in a Swedish restaurant kitchen by animal rights activists. If so, the activists neglected to remove the rubber bands from the poor lobsters’ claws, thus sentencing the lobsters to a slow death by starvation rather than a quick end in a steaming pot.

Others wonder whether something else was involved. A sudden migration from the seacoasts of the Northern Hemisphere, perhaps? If so, the lobsters are receiving no warmer a welcome than Syrian refugees who are also trying to get into Sweden.

American lobsters, declared Gunvor Ericson, state secretary for the Swedish Ministry of Environment and Energy, are an “invasive species.” I’m not sure what that statement says about Syrian refugees. Nor the next thing Erickson said.

“Once the American lobster is established, it will be impossible to eradicate,” the AP quotes Ericson as saying. “This poses a severe threat to the native European lobster, as well as to other native crustacean species.”

Now lobster nativist Sweden is calling for an import ban on live American lobsters among all 28 nations in the European Union. This of course would be good for the Scandinavian fishermen who net smaller and not-nearly-so-meaty European lobsters.

Moreover, it’s only time before someone decides that the answer to this unwelcome invasion of red shelled Americans may be a wall — a sea wall surrounding Sweden at the 12 mile limit. 

Sooner or later, some Swede is even bound to suggest that America could be made to pay for it. You don’t think so? Then how come all the alarm from the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association? They’re attempting to dragoon members of the Maine congressional delegation, the State Department and the White House to their cause. Their cause is to block the lobster ban. 

“This ban is unnecessary,” said Beth Cassoni of the Lobstermen’s Association. She then asked a question considerably more insightful than what American journalists typically ask U.S. presidential candidates during debates of national importance. “Is this an invasion of species or an invasion of economics?”

And some, like me, are wondering what happened to the original 32 escaped lobsters? Have they been deported and shipped home? Have they been set free in Swedish waters again, this time without constricting rubber bands? Or have they ended up in some Swedish pot prior to getting devoured by self-righteous Swedish protectionists? This warrants an investigation.

And I’m not even going to get within a mile of any Trump-ish suggestions that, come to think of it, North Americans could simply skip an expensive wall at the Mexican border and the costly deportations of 11 million people, and instead steam undocumented immigrants and eat them. No no, Donald! Don’t you go there, either! Nor you, Ted.

Whatever happens, scientists are going all political over this. In America, the director of the U of Maine Lobster Institute (yes really there is such a thing) is declaring that lobster shell diseases aren’t contagious and that red-tail disease is virtually extinct. This presumably dismisses one of the Swedish concerns ["They're not only rapists of European lobsters, they also carry disease, and I suppose some of them are good lobsters..."] that could lead to a sea wall.

Another American scientist is poo-poohing the Swedish concern that American lobsters will breed with Swedish lobsters to create a race of mongrel crustaceans that will be at best halfbreed Europeans. 

The Swedes are naturally concerned about this because if they get stuck with an ocean full of  Swedish-speaking American lobsters, or vice-versa, then where will Sweden be?

But “attempts to introduce American lobsters elsewhere have failed,” tush-tushes Rick Whale. (I swear, that's his name. I suppose that if his name had been "Cow" or "Lamb" he would have gone into agricultural science.) Whale does research at the University of Maine’s marine science school. 

Wait a second Mr. Whale, you mean somebody actually has  deliberately introduced American lobsters into foreign waters? Sweden’s perhaps? Maybe the Swedes are right. Maybe the introduction failures occurred because nobody, anywhere, has thought to take off the rubber bands.

Personally, I like the lobsterman in Port Clyde, Maine, a guy named Gerry Cushman who was quoted by the AP as saying, “If they ban Maine lobsters, are we going to ban selling Volvos in Maine?”

I don’t think we have to, Gerry. We can just take all those Volvos and boil them.