I’m really into octopuses lately (no, it is NOT octopi, as commonly thought). If you’ve never read The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery, please pick it up.
Saying The Soul of an Octopus is about an octopus is like saying The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer is about a horse, or that the Bible is about a carpenter. There may be a picture of an octopus on the front of Montgomery’s book, and a horse on the front of Singer’s, but the inside of these tomes spin yarns that speak of warriors, kings and ancient languages. I know now that I will never die happily until I look into the eye of an octopus.
Journalist Montgomery studies and builds complex relationships with various octopuses at the New England Aquarium, anthropomorphizing for the reader the personality of each individual slimy imp. Through my literary foray in this chirpy little tome, I have come to know and love George, Octavia, Kali and Karma. What intelligent, crafty, vivacious, friendly, unpredictable, and highly sentient creatures these cephalopods are.
I’ve been thinking and breathing octopuses. I marvel at the fact that when they lose an arm, the arm continues to hunt and fish, and tries to move the fish to a mouth that is no longer there. I’ve learned that octopuses have beaks and rarely show them to humans. That their suckers have pincer grips so fine that they can untie knots. Aquarium keepers have to go to great lengths to contain their octopuses, since they are masters of escape.
Oh, the places they go.
I began to get angry halfway through the book as Montgomery described the small barrel in which sweet, friendly Kali was housed. There was nowhere else to put her, and they had to be sure she was contained safely. I agonized chapter after chapter when, as they unscrewed her lid, she, so desperate for attention, socialization and space, would practically launch herself out of the barrel to touch them and play with them. And as happens with highly social and intelligent creatures, her cramped and lonely quarters began to prey on her psyche, and she began to exhibit signs of depression.
So much like humans. So much like…me! I have also as of late, with impending empty nest syndrome looming, begun to feel cramped with my surroundings. Bored. Feeling like if someone were to unscrew MY lid, that I would also fling myself out with abandon. Desperate for a new view, new space, new smells, new textures. Get me out of here!
But on page 169 a miracle happens. The handlers, determined to place her in a bigger location, found her a tank. If you are an animal lover like me, you will read pages 169-171 over and over.
She immediately turned bright red with excitement. She flung herself about, probing the new tank with her suckers, feeling the new textures of glass, gravel and stones. She stretched her full self out with wild abandon, something she had never been able to do in her small barrel. Montgomery alliteratively described it as “soaking up sensations like a swelling sponge.”
“She moves rapidly and purposefully,” Montgomery waxes, “touching everything, her arms dashing about like puppies exploring the first snow, or caged birds set free.”
All was good. I was so happy for her, for her handlers, for ME. That will be me soon, I thought!
She escaped the first night and died on the floor. All who knew and loved her were heartbroken, as was I. As I still am. Kali, being such the explorer, managed to squeeze all of her 21 pounds and ten-foot arm span out of a hole measuring 2 1/2 inches by one-inch.
This does not bode well for my impending departure. Will I seek new climes, and find them to be inhospitable? Will I overestimate my abilities?
Will I perish in my escape?
But as Anna, one of the aquarium volunteers states, “what you do today doesn’t affect yesterday.” And Wilson the Octopus-Whisperer states aptly:
“She had a good last day. She had a day of freedom. And that she got out tells you a phenomenally inquisitive and intelligent creature wanted her freedom…it must have taken a lot of effort to get out. A stupid animal wouldn’t do that.”
Indeed.