Dan scuttled across the seafloor. As a mode of locomotion, scuttling's not half bad. With eight walking legs, Dan could reach a decent speed. He could have done better without having to frequently detour around large boulders. The smaller rocks in his way posed less of a challenge since Dan simply crawled over them, grasping at the rocky surfaces with the pinchers on each of his eight legs. He felt a surge of pride at how well he was adapting to life as a wild lobster without stopping to realize that part of the explanation rested with how his lobster instincts took over and kicked into action.
His antennae remained in constant motion, as well, testing the water to keep him on the scent trail of whatever his tiny lobster brains had latched on to. Something about the scent really excited Dan and motivated him to keep a fast pace as he scuttled with determination across the rocky underwater landscape.
In due time, his travels brought him to a house-sized structure made of plastic-coated metal mesh and a tangle of nylon netting. Dan's legs scuttled his body in a circle around the structure. "It's a lobster trap!" Dan realized after he adjusted his thinking to take into account his much smaller size. The cage-like structure only looked as big as a house because Dan's lobster form stretched out for a mere 10 inches from his pointy snout to the tip of his fat tail.
Dan's thoughts grew pensive as he scuttled forward toward an opening in the side of the large trap. He repeated the word "trap" in his thoughts to fully appreciate it. Humans used the traps to catch lobsters for their sweet, delectable, melt-in-your-mouth flesh...
The lobster's instincts wanted to simply march into the trap, which seemed the source of the intoxicating smell that Dan had spent the past half-hour seeking out. Dan held back.
"Kat?"
His sister didn't answer, which gave Dan time to ruminate on the choice he faced. He needed to get back home and out of his unsafe underwater environment where big fish represented an existential threat to the small, vulnerable, temptingly plump lobster. He only made himself jumpy. Did he imagine a dark shadow gliding overhead? He scuttled slightly closer to the trap.
"Kat!"
This time, she responded. "What?" Her thoughts sounded testy. "I thought you wanted us to work on our magical possibilities."
"Kat, are you certain that I will re-spawn after I am eaten?"
"Only if a human eats you," she warned, unnecessarily.
"I know that," he snapped. "Listen, there's a lobster trap..."
Kat laughed. "You are kidding me! This is perfect. What are you waiting for? This way, you really get the complete lobster experience. You'll get harvested before you're cooked and eaten!"
"You don't have to sound so gleeful," Dan said, aghast at her reaction.
Kat sounded stung. "Well, you can always stay put and risk getting eaten by some stupid codfish."
Dan sighed. "Point," he said without his usual enthusiasm.
"Just get it over with, Dan. I can't wait for you to get home so you can tell me all about it."
Dan wished he had never shared any of his strange feelings with Kat. "Too late," she needled him.
He started to say goodbye to her, but that sounded too much like pushing his luck. "Tell mom I'll be home soon." Dan thought more on it and quickly added, "And be sure that's all you tell her!"
"Don't worry, Dan. If I was going to tell mom and dad about their son's proclivity toward getting boiled and buttered, don't you think I would have done it by now?"
The connection ended and Dan marched with feigned bravado into the lobster trap. Almost immediately, he discovered the source of the appealing scent that had lured him to the trap. Some sort of fishy bait dangled in a mesh bag from the top of the trap. His antennae went wild with their movements. He traveled through the trap, climbing through a tunnel of nylon webbing, before he dropped into a larger section cut off from the rest of the trap. He felt a moment of cold claustrophobia and thrashed about by pumping his tail. When he calmed, he noticed a wide opening. The second thoughts he had entertained since dropping into the "parlor," or collection section of the trap, prompted Dan to try squeezing his body through the opening.
"I'm too big!" Dan thought with some appreciation for the irony.
The opening served as a functional escape hatch for crabs, fish, and lobsters too small for harvest. A plump, five-pounder like Dan was the intended target of the trap. He wasn't going anywhere!