My first ceph encounter

[Squidman]

Now that I have familiarized myself with TONMO.com, I will share my first and only ceph experience.

Homer, Alaska, 1992. I was two years old, and visiting the Pratt museum. As I approached the octopus exhibit, the opportunity to feed an octopus was presented to me, and what could I say? I could barely speak, so what COULD I say? Tongs holding a shrimp were given to me, and I held the prey just beneath the surface of the tank. The octopus was quick to react. It immediately grabbed the shrimp, but wrapped some of its arms around my hand, as well!

I have only one memory of my life in Alaska. It is me exiting the museum, holding my mother's hand in my left, and a toy octopus in my right. That octopus was one of the catalysts that sparked my interest in cephalopods. I still have that souvenir octopus, too.

 

[erich orser]

Hey All,

For me it was the night in 1973 when The Wonderful World of Disney showed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. When that big tentacle wrapped-around James Mason, it might as well have reached out of the TV sccreen and grabbed me too. I was three at the time and never got over it. Needless to say, Squidman, your story beats the heck out of mine. It wasn't a GPO was it?

Erich

 

[erich orser]

Actually, that last post probably should have gone in Culture and Entertainment. My first up-close ceph encounter was with a small octopus while snorkeling in Hanama Bay on Oahu at the age of eleven. I got so excited trying to follow it that I nearly drowned and my mother cut herself on coral while grabbing me. It inked me. She scolded me.

Erich

 

[cthulhu77]

Hmmm. My first ceph encounter? Must have been when the walls turned black and green, and voices came from the drains throughout the house telling me that something huge, something monstrous, was arriving soon, due to an odd planetary alignment...
Vistas of writhing tentacles opened to me, convincing and compulsive speech strained through odd angles of basaltic sky flung monoliths...

Or, it could have been when I was seven, and we went to Scripps.

Either one is likely.
greg

 

[Squidman]

Wow

Wow, Cthulhu77.

Please elaborate.

 

[cthulhu77]

Upon which?
One would drive you to the same brink of insanity that I live in ... the other?


Well. Having always been enamoured of the sea, and its life...my parents were kind enough to take me to Scripps every summer while we vacationed with my grandfather, Royce....(who lived at Laguna beach...not actually at it, I suppose, but certainly nearby) and I often spent time with the stingrays and the tanks of octopii...mostly bimaculatus, but very, very interesting to me ! Since that time, I have tried to emulate the confident and calm gaze that they possess...it is so soothing in a world of constant whirling and shifts in the time mainstream...that sort of thing.
The way they changed shape and colour at will reminded me of my favourite grand aunt, Kay...I guess since then I have always loved the octopus (to be honest, not so much the squid...though cuttles seem alright).
sigh.
greg