A 25-foot lobster was flying over Renton for a couple hours Friday afternoon.

A soaring, orange water bug, its green legs scissoring the sky above Liberty Park.

The man below the lobster?

Mike Sarauw of Talbot Hill.

Mike’s been a kite man since…

“Forever,” he says. “Since my parents gave me my first one, I’ve always had one.”

Mike got that first kite at age 5 or 6. He’s now 38.

He takes his kites out whenever he can. On clear days like Friday. Blue sky, lots of wind.

Friday was the first day nice enough to bring out the lobster.

But Mike doesn’t fly the lobster. The lobster flies alone — anchored by a synthetic rope to a utility pole. The rope, called braided Dacron, can handle 500 pounds of tension.

“This is just a hang-in-the-sky kite,” Mike says. “Just hang it in the sky ’cause it’s fun.”

Mike has other kites he controls, like his traction kite. Using two handles, Mike makes the hunk of cloth swoop and sail on the wind like a wing.

Also floating above Liberty Friday afternoon was a multi-colored Japanese hexagon that Mike calls a rokkaku, or rok for short.

A Japanese fighting kite, the rok can knock other kites out of the sky. But Mike’s rok wasn’t fighting Friday. It was anchored to the same pole as the lobster.

Mike has about 50 kites at home.

His kites aren’t cheap. The traction kite cost him $300, the lobster $500.

“It can be an expensive hobby, but it’s a lot of fun,” Mike says.

Mike recently returned from the North American Kite Buggy eXpo in the Nevada desert. He saw a Dutch rider there set a new world speed record for kite buggy riding: 77.05 mph.

Mike likes the extreme kite stuff. But he also likes the relaxing sit-in-a-park kite stuff.

“It’s just something to do,” he says. “It’s just nice. It’s quiet. Usually I have my iPod in and I can just fly kites by myself for a couple hours.”