A giant crab that escaped a cooking pot after spending five days in a fridge is making a miraculous recovery.
The edible crab was originally caught by a fisherman in Dartmouth who then drove it on to Weston-super-Mare in the back of his car.
With its hand-sized claws and 9in shell, the massive crustacean was such a fine specimen the fisherman decided to present it to a sick friend in the hope it would cheer him up.
The crab then spent five days in the fridge.
However, when it came time to cook it, the family decided they could not bring themselves to do it, and instead they contacted Bristol Aquarium.
David Waines, from the aquarium, said: "We received a phone call from a lady who told us they had a large crab in their fridge and they wanted to donate it to the aquarium. Basically, they didn't have the heart to kill him.
"When she told me it had been in there for five days, I couldn't believe it was still alive. I told them to wrap it in a wet towel and bring it along to the aquarium as quickly as possible.
"We placed it into a special tank in our quarantine area and began pumping oxygen-rich seawater over it and it immediately started to show signs of recovery. Hopefully it will enjoy an unexpectedly long retirement."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article