The Soul of an Octopus

by Sy Montgomery

  “Octopus arms really are like separate creatures,” Scott agrees. Not only can they grow new arms when needed; there is evidence that, on occasion, an octopus chooses to detach its own arm, even in the absence of a predator. (Tarantulas do this too—if a leg is injured, they will break if off and eat it.)

  “Does one arm pull off another arm because it doesn’t like its attitude?” Wilson asks with a smile.

  Is this like what happens when Siamese twins fight?

  Wilson says, “It’s amazing how little we know about how animals live. The more you know, the weirder things get. It’s really only in the last twenty years we could even be having this conversation. We’re only starting to understand animals.”

  “I got the job!”

  Christa greets me the next week in her new dark-blue polo shirt with the aquarium’s iconic fish logo. To make up to its visitors for the noise and disruption of the Giant Ocean Tank reconstruction, the aquarium has hired ten new educators, to explain exhibits in greater depth and give the public a more personalized experience. “It’s a temporary job till the GOT is finished,” she explains, “and it’s not full-time. But it’s like a dream come true!” In addition to her uniform, she has also been issued a size-4 wet suit, and her first duty on her new job—which she just started yesterday—was to talk with the public as she walked Myrtle around in the waters of the penguin tray to give the plump turtle her exercise.

  Or at least she thought that was what she was going to do. As she put on her wet suit, one of the other divers—a petite woman with red hair—had turned and asked, “Are you scuba certified?”

  “Well . . . no,” Christa admitted nervously. She’d been looking forward to walking with Myrtle. And now she was afraid she wouldn’t be allowed to do so after all.

  “If you’re not certified,” the red-haired diver said sternly, “you can’t do this”—and then she paused and let a merry smile wash over her face—“without having a whole lot of fun!”

  The mischievous diver, as it turned out, was Big D, who then showed Christa how to use a bit of lettuce to lure Myrtle into following her all over the penguin tray. Myrtle can’t just be left on her own to have free run of the entire tray unsupervised, Christa explains. Because she’s so big she can get wedged in between the rocks. “She loves the area near a filter, between the pipe and a wall,” Christa says, and on her walks, staffers need to be careful the 550-pound animal doesn’t get stuck in there.

  Myrtle’s exercise period lasts two hours. Each of the four sea turtles gets a personal escort during their exercise time, and each has different needs. One of the two loggerheads is blind. She was rescued in 1987 off Cape Cod in the fall with such severe hypothermia everyone thought she was dead. A worker had already started hauling her body away when someone noticed she twitched, and she was rushed to the aquarium for rehab. “That’s why they named her Retread,” Christa explains. Because she was blinded by frostbite, “when she swims toward you, you get out of her way. When she’s going full blast, she’ll knock you over. She’s not the most graceful turtle.” Another turtle, Ari, a Kemp’s ridley, likes divers to bend down and lift her up in the water. She asks for this by holding her head up very high. All the divers know what she wants and rush to do her bidding. “She’s got us wrapped around her little finger!” Christa says. “Or make that around the one claw on her front flipper.”

  Even with her new job—and still working four or five nights a week at the bar—Christa makes a point of visiting with Kali with us on Wednesdays. With the surf perch cured, Bill has moved Kali’s barrel back to its original position in the sump.

  At about eighteen months old, Kali looks as big as Octavia now—partially because Octavia has visibly shrunken. It’s ironic: Aging, shrinking Octavia, in her 560-gallon tank, wants nothing more than to stay safe with her eggs in one small corner of her den. Growing, vigorous Kali, confined to her 50-gallon barrel, is eager to explore a wider world.

  Wilson wishes Kali and Octavia could switch places. But there’s no way to move Octavia’s eggs with her, and separating her from the eggs she tends so assiduously seems unthinkable.

  “That would devastate Octavia,” says Christa.

  “And at this point,” admits Wilson, “the eggs are a good show for the visitors, too.”

  One day, Octavia gave a show that we had never seen before. Christa saw it first, on a Monday afternoon during her break. The sunflower sea star, who normally stays on the opposite side of the tank, began slowly advancing along the back of the tank near the top toward the octopus. He had made it two thirds of the way across the tank when Octavia shot off her eggs, directly toward him, headfirst, arms curled and moving like a boxer. “She was only off the eggs two to three seconds,” Christa said. But it was enough to impress the sea star. As he beat a slow retreat, Octavia settled back on her eggs.

  Later, she did this again. Hanging in the hammock of her own arms, Octavia had just accepted a silverside from Wilson’s tongs and eaten it. She dropped a second fish. Then Wilson offered a fish to the sunflower sea star. The star was about halfway across the tank with his mouth facing out toward the public. He took one fish, and had started moving it from his tube feet toward his mouth, when Wilson offered another, which he also accepted. As the two fish began their slow ride along the escalator of his tube feet toward his stomach, the sea star continued his advance across the glass in Octavia’s direction. She grew more and more active as he approached, waving her arms about, suckers out, her pupils huge. She first sent one long arm out, stretching more than four feet, all the way across the tank. Then she lowered herself off her eggs, exposing hundreds of pearly egg chains. Though she was still attached by a handful of large suckers of two arms to the roof of her lair, she moved all her other arms, her interbrachial web, and her body completely off the eggs. Then she shot a powerful blast from her funnel and the egg chains swayed like curtains in a breeze. She moved her arms excitedly, suckers out and tips curled. This display lasted perhaps fifteen minutes. Finally, the sea star stopped moving toward her and reversed direction. Even without a brain to process it, he seemed to get the message. Octavia settled back down on her eggs. The movements of her arms became slower and calmer. Finally she seemed to relax.

  “I think she was confused at first by the sunflower sea star,” said Wilson, who had come down the stairs to watch her with us. “Then she figured out he was only eating his fish. But if the sunflower sea star had gotten any closer, I don’t know what she would do.” In the wild, sunflower sea stars are known predators of octopus eggs.

  “She definitely wins the Mother of the Year award!” Christa said.

  But despite Octavia’s meticulous care, her eggs are shrinking. A few dozen have fallen to the sand below. Wilson wonders if they will eventually disintegrate. If the eggs were gone, he feels, Octavia might do just fine in Kali’s barrel. And in fact, the next week, he asks Bill whether the aquarium would be willing to switch the two octopuses. But nobody wants to do it. “The eggs are too good an exhibit,” Wilson tells me.

  Some days, Kali is excited and grabby. Sometimes she plays for twenty minutes without tiring. At times like that, she might accept a fish, but not eat it right away. Instead, she wants to crawl and tug, her arms coiling up ours, sucking our skin. Sometimes she’ll rise up, then abruptly sink, slacken her grip—and then, once we all relax, pull one of us with a force and suddenness that makes us all laugh at her octopus joke.

  After a play session, we often rest together. She hangs at the top of the barrel, her suckers gently holding us, suspending time. Sometimes, as we watch the play of colors across her skin, it feels like we are watching thoughts flit across her mind. What is she thinking? Does Kali similarly wonder about us, as she tastes the fleeting flavors of the blood flowing beneath our skin? Does she savor our affection, our calm, our delight?

  But other times, especially lately, Kali seems subdued. She touches us tentatively, her color pale. Sometimes she rises to the top to greet us, but she soon s
inks, the entire bottom of the barrel covered with her arms. This scares me. Even with regular interactions with people, even with the live crabs Bill gives her to eat, can this young, growing animal thrive in a space so small and barren?

  For the next few weeks, Kali’s predicament dominates our Wednesday lunchtime discussions. What about shipping Kali to another aquarium with more room? Animals are constantly shuttling between aquariums. A five-foot zebra shark named Indo now swims in the penguin tray, having just arrived on loan from Maryland; meanwhile, Scott is preparing to drive some of the larger, older herrings from the Temperate Gallery to an aquarium with a bigger tank in Montreal. Sending Kali away, even on loan, pains me to even mention. But would it be best for her?

  No, says Scott. Bill is well aware that large octopuses are famously difficult to ship. When upset, an octopus will ink, and in a plastic travel bag with no filter for the water, a giant Pacific octopus, with enough ink to obscure vision throughout a 3,000-gallon tank, would choke on its own defense. “Plus,” adds Scott, “they’re more prone to stress in the first place because they’re so cognizant.”

  We can’t just build a new tank, because while the entire aquarium is in disarray, it would be difficult to justify more construction for a tank that only one individual would use for only a few months—or possibly a few weeks. Then where to put it? And even if a new tank could be built, could it be octopus-proofed? “The problem is, she could get out, and then you’ve got one hell of a job,” says Wilson. “If you have the smallest hole, they get out. No,” Wilson tells us, “Bill doesn’t have any good choices. There is nothing he can do.”

  As distressing as Kali’s situation is, Wilson is well aware that people, too, must live with space constraints. Last week, in order for the hospice facility to accommodate new patients, his wife was moved to a different room.

  “Isn’t that disorienting for her?” I asked.

  “It’s not good,” he said, “but we have no other choice. Everyone is doing their best.”

  Wednesday, December 19: My approach to Octavia and Kali today feels particularly delicious. It’s nearly Christmas. I feel it is going to be a good day. The construction noise is much louder than the classical music the aquarium is piping in to mitigate it, but the management has deployed so many educators to make up for it, the public doesn’t seem to mind. It seems there is one educator for almost every group of visitors. Two divers in wet suits stand in the penguin tray waiting to answer questions; a volunteer bends down to show a first grader a model of a hawksbill turtle; other volunteers are busy showing children how to gently stroke the rays in the touch tank. The aquarium feels like the best place in the world to be.

  This morning I feel compelled to sit by the Goliath grouper as I come in. He’s in front of the Blue Hole exhibit. His eye swivels to notice me. I am the only one in front of his tank. We sit two inches apart, and I feel as if I could pet him like a dog. He’s as big as a dog, perhaps three and a half feet long, though they can grow to eight feet. “You could put your hand in a grouper’s mouth,” Marion says. “And you could get it back, but it would be bloody.” But it’s peaceful to sit by him and have him bless me with his regard. In the wild, groupers have big, beautiful eyes that stare at visitors from the coral. They are said to be as individual as dogs and quite intelligent. Snorkelers and divers have gotten to know them as individuals.

  I leave the Goliath grouper and pass the ancient fishes, the sea dragons, the Salt Marsh, the Mangrove Swamp, the herrings and jellies. Up the ramp, now curtained in fabric, I head to the flooded Amazon Forest and its separate piranha tank, to the anaconda tank with its schools of electric-blue and red cardinal tetras and busy turtles, on to the electric eel, to the New England Pond, to the Trout Stream, then another turn to the Gulf of Maine exhibit, to Stellwagen Bank, to the Isles of Shoals with its smart lumpfish and its sweet, funny-looking flounder . . . to Eastport Harbor, the goosefish and her coterie of glittering Atlantic silversides . . . to the Pacific Coastal Tidepool with its forest of giant green anemones, struck every twenty-five seconds with a crashing, bubbling wave that transforms everything like a gush of liquid lightning . . . and finally to my prize, Octavia, on her eggs, beautiful and sedate. Her eggs have a brownish tinge today. But she is tending them as carefully as ever.

  I have turned on my flashlight but not taken off my coat when Anna appears, out of school for Christmas break. We hug, and seconds later, Wilson comes down. “Good. You are here,” he says. “Come upstairs. Bill is moving Kali!”

  Scott, Christa, and Marion wait for us in the hall.

  Kali will be moving to C1, a 90-gallon tank that recently held some of the Gulf of Maine invertebrates that Bill collected on his trip. The Turner Construction crew had to make sturdy lids for tanks C1 through C3, because they needed to be able to kneel atop these tanks to get to pipes and wiring. “These lids are awesome,” says Bill. The crew fashioned them from half-inch-thick Plexiglas. By adding four vise grips, Bill can clamp the lid on Kali’s new tank tight enough to resist even her enormous octo-strength. It seems like the perfect solution.

  Bill unscrews the top of Kali’s barrel. Though she looks up, she doesn’t float to the top. Bill would like to get her to go into a plastic bag and carry her the few steps across the narrow aisle to C1. “A plastic bag!” I say, taken aback. “She came here in a plastic bag,” says Bill.

  But Kali is having none of it. It’s as if she’s suspicious. Perhaps she can sense something’s up.

  “That’s okay,” says Bill. “I’ll just lift up the barrel.” Empty, the barrel weighs about ten pounds, but with water in it (and salt water is heavier than fresh), it will weigh at least 30 more. Kali weighs another 20. But tall, strong Bill lifts up the four-foot-tall barrel as easily as I might pick up a Kleenex. Water pours out the holes in the sides into the sump, but there’s enough in the bottom to keep Kali perfectly comfortable during the six seconds it takes Bill to carry her to C1 and pour her in.

  Kali rights herself in an instant and turns bright red. Immediately she begins to probe her new world with busy suckers. They flatten, suction, then slide along the glass walls of the big tank. All her arms are in motion. She concentrates her efforts on the front wall nearest to us, but also touches the sides of the tank—but not the back, facing the wall. She looks like a mime doing the “inside a box” routine, but with 1,600 suckers instead of just two palms. With the possible exception of the holding facility where she was first caught in the wild, she has never felt or tasted glass before.

  Christa and Marion and Anna, Wilson and Bill, Scott and I watch, enthralled, as this young, intelligent, vigorous animal finally gets the chance to do what we’ve all wanted for her these long months: to explore an environment more complex and interesting than the dark barrel. Her new tank is not only larger than the old one, but it has a gravel and sand bottom, new surfaces to taste and feel, and interesting views out three sides. Another creature might be frightened by the newness, but Kali seems hungry for the wider world. She literally expands before our eyes. We have never seen her arms stretched out like this before. “She’s so big!” says Marion. Her arms unfurled, her webbing spread, Kali seems to be soaking up sensations like a swelling sponge. She moves rapidly and purposefully, touching everything, her arms dashing about like puppies exploring the first snow, or caged birds set free. “She’s so happy!” Christa cries. “Yes, very happy,” Wilson says softly.

  I am so glad—glad for Kali; glad for Christa in her new job; glad for Wilson, who so richly deserves some joy at this difficult time in his life; glad for Anna, whose meds were recently adjusted to free her of her tremor; glad for Marion, whose headaches are getting better; glad for Scott, whose annual trip to Brazil is next month. . . .

  “Are you happy, Bill?” I ask.

  “Yeah!” he says. And he clearly is happy to see his octopus enjoying her new freedom. But he’s nervous too, and isn’t afraid to admit it. “It’s a big risk to throw her in this thing,” he says. “You never real
ly know. We think it’s octopus-proof. But they figure out ways to do things.”

  I ask him what his biggest concern is. “Well, I think we have this set, but she could unscrew the standpipe in the drain.” The tank drains into the sump so the water can recirculate. Kali might drain her own tank. Or she could block the pipe and flood the entire floor.

  But for now, it feels like there is little room for worry amid so much joy. While her back arms continue to investigate the front and sides of the new tank, with her front arms, Kali now begins to explore the tank’s porcelain lip. Wilson offers her a capelin as a distraction, which she eagerly accepts. But, since they are all such champion multitaskers, no octopus is easily distracted. Kali can feed and explore at the same time, while we can hardly process all we’re seeing. Her underside is plastered to the front panel of glass, and we watch the capelin slide along her suckers, conveyor-belt-like, into her mouth. Meanwhile, more arms are curling balletically out of the tank, and Anna, Christa, and I gently wrangle them. “Tentacles in the tank,” Anna says to her softly. Kali does not seem adamant about coming out of the tank, as she had been at times in the barrel, and we easily contain her. “She is being very gentle,” says Wilson. I am almost overwhelmed with the desire to kiss one of her suckers, the way I sometimes kiss the pads of my dog’s feet. But I refrain. As much as we all feel her joy as our own, Kali is, I remind myself, a large, strong, wild, nearly adult octopus. We cannot know how she might react to an utterly alien gesture from the human world.

  And yet . . . Kali bobs her face to the surface and looks carefully into our eyes. Our hands respond as if summoned: We reach almost as one to stroke her head, which she seems to not merely permit, but to enjoy. She brings her eyes out of the water. Though the light is very bright, her pupils are dilated, like those of a person who’s newly in love.