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How can anyone not be interested in the octopus?
I once kept an octopus in a sea water aquarium. For the week that I kept her, she spent all her time watching every move that I made. Every night even though I piled the aquarium with plywood heaped with books and anything heavy, she would crawl out and I would find her on the rug the next morning. Thinking she was dead, I would scrape her into a dustpan and put her back in the aquarium where she would come to life -- unhappily. She had so much impact on me that by the end of the week I knew I had to put her back in the ocean. Her huge consciousness had made me feel small and stupid for trying to keep a creature that could make itself felt that way in a small aquarium. This happened in the '60's but I never forgot her and I have ever since been crazy about octopus (and cuttle fish). We have so consistently underrated the creatures we share the world with that this was a wake up call for me. For awhile, I wanted to be a marine biologist but I knew I wouldn't want to spend my time killing and cutting up living creatures to "scientifically" study them. If rats don't take over, than surely the octopus will once we are gone. Oh, yes, and I LOVED THIS BOOK and the woman who wrote it.
March 2016 · Books · verified purchase