CINCINNATI – A 7-year-old Ohio girl who wanted to set a grocery store lobster free has gotten her wish.

What started last month when Myranda Hutchinson won Bubba the lobster in a raffle in Cincinnati ended Saturday when the crustacean found freedom about 1,100 miles away off the coast of Maine.

Myranda won the nearly 8-pound lobster last month during an anniversary celebration at a grocery store in Cincinnati.

“I nicknamed him Bubba because he was so big,” said Dave Brandon, the store’s seafood salesman. “He just kinda looked like a Bubba.”

Myranda was determined to win Bubba so she could set him free, said the girl’s mother Julianne Hutchinson.

The family’s calls and e-mails to zoos and aquariums were futile. None wanted to take Bubba in.

“That size is unusual but … lobsters are a dime a dozen,” Columbus Zoo and Aquarium curator Mike Brittsan said.

But Brittsan helped in another way.

He helped get Bubba to diver Eddie Monat in Bar Harbor, Maine, who agreed to find Bubba a home off the Atlantic coast.

Monat, who owns Diver Ed’s Dive-In Theater, films his dives and shows live footage to his boat passengers and also brings sea creatures on board for passengers to see and touch.

Bubba made it to Maine after Myranda’s mother and stepfather paid $280 to fund his cross-country airplane ride in a foam container.

Bubba should be safe from being eaten as long as he stays in Maine water. A lobster as big as Bubba is illegal to catch and keep in Maine.