"We picked up 5 pounds of this desert lobster and cooked them later in the RV," he told lawmakers. "If you shut your eyes and considered how far you were from a big city, they kind of tasted like lobster."
At the Desert Lobster Cafe, which is part building, part boat, lunchtime arrives, and half a dozen diners stream in. Many live in town and, like siblings, shout among tables. ("You get rid of your favorite ex-wife?")
They remember Bob spending years on this structure of blue corrugated tin, where the main entryway is flanked by a sign trumpeting: FINE FOODS and TRUCKERS WELCOME. (A smaller sign cautions: "CASH ONLY PLEASE. We don't have a credit card machine yet.")
Take a look around the front room: a tomahawk, a peace pipe, crab traps, a ship porthole, a stuffed mountain lion, its skull. Bob once envisioned this as a showroom for his desert lobsters.
But.
The diners shake their heads, remembering.
The freshwater crustaceans did not charm state officials, who feared that if a customer decided to free some crayfish into waterways rather than boil them, the creatures might feast on the eggs of Railroad Valley springfish, a threatened species.
So wildlife officials sparred with Bob for years, according to legislative testimony. His permit, they said, allowed him to sell live crayfish only to licensed commercial operators. He sold them to people from his roadside stand anyway. The state stripped him of his permit and took him to court.
On a sweltering morning in 2003, after months of warnings, authorities stormed the greenhouse with a court order and chlorine bleach. Some wore bulletproof vests and carried guns.
"They poisoned them and hauled a bunch off and dumped them out in the desert," Bob says. He had as much as 300 pounds of crayfish at the time.
"I have a stark memory of stopping back in and seeing the carnage left behind," Beers told lawmakers in 2007, according to meeting minutes.
The Eddys argued that Nevadans could order crayfish online and buy them in other states. Why was their stand singled out? Supporters denounced the Great Crayfish Raid as government overreaching and spread the tale around the state.
"I feel so much safer living in Nevada now that we have destroyed that prosperous crawfish farm in Mina," sneered one letter to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Guard your tropical fish aquariums and casino fish tanks; they are next," mocked another.
