Staffers at a Red Lobster restaurant in Layton, in the US state of Utah, are being praised for saving an egg-bearing female lobster, reports KSL-TV, a Salt Lake City-based NBC affiliate.

Such lobsters are not supposed to be caught for the dinner table, but somehow one ended up in a shipment from Maine. 

On Tuesday (July 30) a restaurant supervisor noticed one of the lobsters in the tank appeared to be dead, because of its posture, with the tail curled in and part of the lobster floating above the water. When they plucked the crustacean from the tank, however, and pulled back the tail, some of the eggs fell out.

Red Lobster contacted Ready Seafood, a Portland, Maine-based division of Canada's Premium Brands that supplies the restaurant chain.

At the Layton restaurant, staffers carefully separated the female lobster from the others, according to the TV station. They used wet cardboard, ice packs and cold, wet paper towels to pack her up for the trip back to Maine, where she was delivered via FedEx.

It was a whirlwind week for the female lobster, from Maine to Utah and back to Maine in four days, said restaurant manager Nikki Smith.

Female lobsters are usually v-notched and returned to the water when they are caught in traps. This one didn't have a v-notch marking when she showed up at the Utah restaurant. Back in Maine, a v-notch was added before she and her eggs were carefully released back into the ocean, according to the news station.