Lobster caught with pilfered wallet still in its grips

[Tiger in Spain 0]

Catch of the day! Lobster pinches Briton's missing wallet

LONDON (AFP) - A British swimmer who felt the pinch after losing his wallet during a late-night dip in the sea was convinced it had vanished -- until it turned up clamped between a lobster's claws.

The wallet was recovered by a diver who caught the crustacean red-handed on the sea bed.

After picking up the offending lobster, he pried the wallet from the creature's claws and after finding a business card inside, handed it into a hairdressing salon.

Swimmer Paul Westlake, 30, from Plymouth on the southwest English coast, received a surprise telephone call from a staff member at the salon he uses, who told him the wallet had been salvaged from a lobster's pincers.

Westlake said he wanted to thank the diver-cum-good Samaritan in person, but his identity remains a mystery.

"I have never eaten a lobster and I never will now," vowed the grateful swimmer.

"The wallet is intact, but it looks a bit messed up," he told the Plymouth Evening Standard newspaper.

Westlake lost his wallet when he and his brother dived into Plymouth Sound for a long-distance swimming race following a boozy evening in a local pub.

Realising their limitations, the washed-out brothers aborted the mission and returned to the shore -- where they realized a wallet had slipped into the sea.

A relieved Westlake collected it from the salon and found the bank cards still worked despite their plunge into the briny sea and subsequent seizure.

Amy Harvey, a salon employee, said: "We were contacted by a diver who said that he had found a wallet with our details inside.

"We actually thought it was a joke when he rang. He said it was found in the claw of a lobster -- which has now been eaten."

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