Columnist Susan Snyder: Eddy can’t get enough of lobster

Friday, April 12, 2002 | 2:24 a.m.

Bob Eddy really does raise lobsters at Desert Lobster in Mina.

For once, I let curiosity do the driving as I headed to Carson City last week, and I stopped at Eddy's 200-acre "ranch" that sits about 250 miles north of Las Vegas off U.S. 95.

Natural hot springs keep the 10 lobster ponds at a comfy 80 degrees, even in the dead of winter. Mina-native Eddy used to ranch cattle, but federal rules and regulations made it difficult, he said. He sold the cows and sought his fortune on the smooth blue-green backs of Australian lobsters.

"There's few regulations," Eddy said. "The more I got to reading on it, the more I got interested. I figured I would raise enough to eat a few."

He's raised a few. Conservatively, he figures he has 500,000 of varying sizes at any given time. But it could be close to 1 million.

Hard telling. Pull up one of the potato sack-lined tires that serves as a lobster cubbyhole, pluck out a lobster, and its underside is covered with tiny babies too numerous to count.

Eddy started with 300 lobsters eight years ago. A female bears 400 to 1,500 young (no, I didn't ask what they call a baby lobster) three to five times a year.

Fresh-water Australian lobsters don't get as large as salt-water ones. The largest grow to about 1 pound, and it takes about two years. Eddy typically sells them five to a pound for $14.

"I'm not on the Internet yet," he said. "We sell them off the highway. You meet a lot of people."

Eddy says he has received calls from Strip hotels asking to purchase his lobsters for their tables.

"But I don't have enough," he said. "They'd eat me out of business in five minutes."

Eddy hopes to open a restaurant of his own on two lots that he bought in Mina for $3,500. Construction is to begin soon, he says. If all goes well it could be open by fall.

He promises nothing fancy -- just burgers, fries and, of course, lobster tails.

Farm fresh. Raised locally.

It would be a boon to Eddy's hometown, which has all but ceased to exist economically. There is no mine work left, and ranching is no way to make a living anymore either.

"He was a hell of a cowboy," Dallas Woods, a neighbor, said. Eddy was talking to a woman who had called from Hawaii. She wants to open a lobster farm of her own.

Woods sat at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette, his well-worn cowboy hat slightly pushed back on his head.

"I used to cowboy -- for about 20 years," Woods said. "It's a hard life. Long hours, low pay. It's a good life, but there's no future whatsoever in it now."

Woods says he moved to Mina from Wyoming and has gone back into general contracting work. Remodeling, mostly.

"Right now I'm doing a little remodeling on a cathouse," Woods said. "I've done a few of those. But they want you to take your wages out in trade. There's not much work for wages."

Lobsters sound pretty good by comparison.

Eddy pulled a fat one from his kitchen freezer. It was covered with plastic wrap and red from being blanched.

"I don't get a paycheck," Eddy said. "But it pays for itself."