By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – As far as rare things go, George Gendron’s mottled “calico” lobster ranks right up there.

The rare specimen, a one-pound, two-ounce chick lobster with yellow spots, came off the truck from the lobster co-op in Harpswell Wednesday afternoon. His friend Bob Akerley was helping sort the shipment for sale at Gendron’s Lisbon Street seafood store when he spied the oddity.

“It looked kind of strange to me, and George said You think?'” Akerley said. “We thought we should contact the aquarium and see if they were interested in it.”

They were. The Marine Resources Aquarium in West Boothbay Harbor dispatched an intern right away. By Thursday morning, she’d spirited the calico crustacean off to the aquarium’s tanks.

It was a one-in-a-million find, Akerley estimated. The intern put the odds higher, about one in 10 million.

It’s an academic question, according to aquarium Director Edward Seidel.

“You hear people say they’re one in a million, but that’s not scientific,” Seidel said. “Nobody has ever sat and counted how many color-morphed lobsters are caught, so they really don’t know.”

Calico lobsters are rare, even among oddly colored lobsters. You’re more likely to find purely yellow or red varieties. But a blue lobster is even more rare.

“But they all turn red when you boil them,” Seidel said.

Gendron’s calico lobster is free from that fate for a long time. It was settling into its new home in the aquarium’s color-morph display Thursday afternoon.

Seidel said the aquarium has lobsters of every color now – from pure red and yellow to blue and several varieties of calicos. He has two splits, blue on one side and yellow on the other. He even has an albino lobster and a 23-pound behemoth on display.

“People see a lot of lobsters, especially in Maine,” Seidel said. “They get used to seeing them, and they all look pretty much the same. So they’re surprised when they see all the varieties and colors that are out there.”

Gendron’s lobster is the only one in the collection with yellow spots on a dark shell. The aquarium’s other calicos are colored like leopards, with dark spots on a yellow shell.

Gendron said it’s not the first time he’s had a lobster with a mottled shell in his store.

“I’ve had a couple, but I sold them,” he said. “If I’d only known.”

So what’s it worth? That question left the aquarium’s intern speechless. But clerk John Violette had an answer. He hoisted the animal out of its aluminum-bowl holding pen and plopped it on the store’s scale.

“At $5.65 a pound, that’s $6.44,” Violette said.

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