The Soul of an Octopus

by Sy Montgomery

  “Okay, let’s let her rest,” Wilson says. He’s eager to see how the tank top goes on, how snugly it fits over the standpipe, and how he will be able to take it off for feedings and interactions in the future. Bill lifts up the Plexiglas cover and, as we urge the last tips of Kali’s arms away from the edges, he places the lid atop the tank and secures it with four vise grips—and then adds 20 pounds of dive weights at each corner, just for good measure. Kali immediately reaches for the novel surface and adheres perhaps fifty suckers to the new roof of her world. In the air, her suckers stretch out an inch from holding her weight below, giving her the awkward look of a person who is hanging from the ceiling by his lips. I wonder how long she can stay there without drying out. Scott assures me, “That’s what slime is for.” She’ll let go before she hurts herself. “She’s smart, remember?”

  Bill examines the lid. “The new lids for the other tanks work perfectly,” he says. “But for holding an octopus . . . it might be all right. . . .” The farthest vise grip will be difficult for Wilson to reach. “It’s a work in progress,” says Bill. Perhaps he can add a hinge to the back? Or, suggests Wilson, the top could be cut into two sections, front and back, with the back permanently secured and only the accessible front easily opened.

  Bill will consider these suggestions. “I want to get it right for the future,” says Bill, “for the next octopus. I want a more permanent solution in case this problem arises again.” I can feel the weight Bill has borne for these many months, the great burden he has carried, of feeling forced, by circumstances he could not predict and beyond his control, to keep a young, intelligent animal he loved in dark confinement. He says, “I don’t want another octopus stuck in a barrel since May.”

  We watch Kali for more minutes, rapt in her octopus happiness. “This is one of those rare moments I get a warm, fuzzy feeling,” says Anna. People with Asperger’s often seem emotionally detached, and Anna is not given to sappy outbursts. “You get a warm, fuzzy feeling from someone who is cold and slimy,” I observe. And I think: That’s proof of Anna’s truly great heart. And of Kali’s charisma and soul.

  At lunch, we catch up. How has Christa’s job been going? Has the new zebra shark bitten anyone? No, but a burrfish bit Christa’s finger—“He follows you around and bites when he gets the opportunity. It feels like your finger is stuck in a big clamp.” Marion recalls a gar who only accepted silversides of a certain shape—small and straight—otherwise, he would carry the fish over to the rays and release the food to them. Wilson tells us about an 18-inch-long shark who was added to a tank with a big grouper in it. Almost immediately, the grouper swallowed the shark, and then spat it out whole and unharmed. “But afterward,” Wilson says, “that shark almost never came out. They had to feed it on a stick behind a safety net.”

  We are coming up against the last day of the Mayan calendar, and we joke about whether the earth’s polarity will shift—and whether sharks, who can sense the magnetic field of the earth, will be affected. “Will all the great white sharks show up in Martha’s Vineyard looking for dinner?” Scott suggests.

  With the mention of sharks, talk returns to biting, and we again try to catalog all the creatures who have bitten Anna. She counts them off. Octopus. Piranha. Geese . . . a camel bit off some of her hair once. Scott suggests we go through the alphabet to see if twenty-six animals have bitten her. We start at the end of the alphabet. What about a zebra? No? “But a zebu sucked my finger at a small zoo,” Anna offers. “Does that count?” We decide it does. “What about a yak?” Yes, at a farm, she was bitten by a yak; she was feeding it and it nipped her by mistake. What animal starts with X ? “Xenopus,” says Scott, naming a species of African clawed frog. “Yes, that bit me,” Anna confirms. We go back to A. “A—what about an ant-eater? No, that doesn’t have teeth. But one could lick her. . . . What if it licked you?”

  One animal that has bitten all of us is the arowana, of which there are two in the Amazon tank. Bony-tongued and carnivorous, these long, silver fish are primitive, athletic hunters that will jump out of the water to grab prey. But today there is a new arowana, a golden Asian species, who just arrived from the Toledo Zoo, and we leave our restaurant in order to visit with it. We are eager to garner its blessing for Kali’s new home, for throughout Asia, this species is revered as an icon of good fortune. Home aquarists are willing to pay $10,000 to own one. Known in China as the golden dragonfish for its large, shiny, dragon-like scales, it’s the most powerful fish used in feng shui, believed to bring wealth and success, and to protect its owners from danger, accidents, ill health, and bad luck.

  “It is able to interpret the language, stay focused on tasks, and display a high level of intelligence,” claims the website Fengshui Mall.com. “One of the most prominent abilities that the Arowana has is being able to see bad events in the future, detecting the aura of negative energy to come,” the site continues, advising that its powers are maximized if its tank is placed in a main hall.

  And though we are not a superstitious lot, we might be forgiven for believing this, because of what had happened with Thor, the electric eel. Anna remembers the exact date: December 7, 2011. While his regular tank was under repair, Thor was temporarily housed in one half of a large tank behind the scenes. It had been partitioned with a three-foot-tall barrier for the safety of its other temporary residents, a lungfish and a female arowana whom Scott had raised from a baby. Electric eels are not known for leaping from the water. But Thor did, landing in the other half of the tank—where he electrocuted two of the most valuable and long-lived fish in the aquarium.

  That Scott had known and loved the arowana for more than a decade made her loss particularly tragic. But worse, said Anna, “when Thor killed the arowana, he killed the good luck.” Immediately after the arowana’s death, Scott was beset with a string of disasters. I had known of some of them, but not until Anna and Marion recited them for me did I realize how many there were.

  The night of the arowana’s death, while Scott was riding the ferry home, his parents were in a car accident and his mother was hospitalized. Next, a favorite uncle fell down a flight of stairs while visiting a cathedral and died. Scott himself fell down the stairs at his home, injuring himself. His son was hospitalized with a high fever. On his annual trip to Brazil, one of the participants, a long-time friend and supporter of his work, died, and Scott was forced to spend most of the trip wrestling with the unhappy task of how to get his friend’s body shipped out of a foreign country and back to the States. Scott developed a skin disease. His dog died. The bad luck, in fact, had persisted into August, when his flock of chickens was decimated by a fox and he felt forced to give away the few survivors.

  The new arowana’s quarantine tank is auspiciously located only a few feet from Scott’s desk, just inside the hallway from the volunteers’ lounge. Seeing this new, beautiful fish adds to our jubilation. We joke with Scott that now he is invincible. Surely there will be enough good luck to flow down the hall to Cold Marine and wash over Kali in her new home.

  I need to leave early, because on this snowy day I took a bus instead of driving. I had planned to catch the 2:45 p.m. home. But after another look at Kali, I hesitate. I wonder, without voicing it, if I should just stay. Maybe I should try to spend the night at the aquarium and watch Kali in her new tank.

  “Will anyone check on Kali tonight?” I ask Scott.

  Not only does the aquarium employ night watchmen, he explains, machine system operators make rounds of every gallery, behind the scenes and in the basement, every four hours every night, checking for leaks or flooding or problems with animals. Usually if there’s something wrong they can fix it, but if not, they phone the senior aquarists. That’s how Scott found out this time of year five years ago that Kathleen the anaconda was giving birth, bringing him rushing in at three in the morning.

  So there is no reason to worry about Kali, no reason for me not to go home tonight to my husband and border collie, no reason to change plans for tomorrow
’s holiday tea with Jody and another friend—no reason to do anything but get ready for Christmas, my favorite holiday, knowing that all is now right with the world. Before leaving, Anna gives me a beautiful painting she has made of a coconut octopus. She was able to paint it because her tremor is gone. The painting will occupy a place of honor on my desk, beside the framed drawing Danny made, with the help of a computer program, of me, Wilson, Christa, and him with Kali in her barrel on his and Christa’s birthday.

  Marion has baked Christmas cookies for us all, and I give out baklava I have made. Earlier, Octavia eagerly ate two squid. Now we can all wholeheartedly hope for her continued long life, without fearing Kali’s good fortune is cheating her. I leave the aquarium singing Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World”—“Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea”—feeling full of octopus elation, eager for the blessings of a new year.

  At about 11:30 a.m. the next day, I noticed Scott had sent me an e-mail at 10:51: “Can you please call me on my cell phone when you get this?”

  I phoned.

  “I have bad news,” Scott told me. “Kali is dead.”

  I tried to piece together what had happened. That night and early morning, all had been well. An astute and reliable night watchman had last checked Cold Marine at about 6 a.m. Then at about 7:30, Mike Kelleher, assistant curator of fishes, came into the gallery as usual—and, to his horror, found Kali, pale tan, on the floor at the foot of the new tank. The tank lid was just as Bill had left it, with all four clamps and 80 pounds of dive weights on top. Due to a miscommunication, Mike believed that Kali had been transferred to Octavia’s tank, and that it was elderly Octavia who had escaped, not young Kali. But he didn’t hesitate for a moment. Quickly he opened the lid of the tank, returned the octopus to the water, and raced off to get the vet. As Bill was walking up the stairs to work, he ran into Mike, who told him what happened. Bill dashed to the tank, tore off the lid, and started artificial respiration—which, for an octopus, entails holding the body up so the mantle opening can be flushed with salt water from a hose. Kali’s siphon was still moving, though minimally, and her body and arms changed to dark brown.

  The vet came running and gave her shots of dexamethasone and atropine, to try to restart her three hearts from cardiac arrest, as well as oxytetracyline, a powerful antibiotic. For a while, everyone thought they could save her. But an hour after the injections, she had again turned tan. Although her muscles still contracted and her skin darkened on contact, Kali was dead.

  Only after lunch did Christa learn the news from Scott and go to pay her respects. “There was no one in the gallery,” she told me as we wept together over the phone. “Her tank was covered with a black tarp. It was pretty awful. She was very flat, but kind of laid out nicely. I looked down and didn’t see her eyes. But her head was toward the front of the tank on the bottom. Her arms were toward the back. She was that iconic octopus shape. The oxygen bubbler was still bubbling. It was very strange. She was a milky white. It was such a strange way to see her. You expect to see a bright red octopus, or a brown octopus. She had pinkish white toward the edge of her tentacles,” Christa said, “but she was still very beautiful.”

  Just as when a person dies, I needed to touch base with those who had known my lost friend. “What was your favorite day with Kali?” I asked Christa. “It was the day Danny met her, and got soaked by her,” she said. “And then—since we first met her, I just constantly looked forward to the next Wednesday when we’d see her again. Danny is going to be very upset. We were planning a visit to the aquarium together soon. It’s not going to be as it was. . . .”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe this happened. We were all so happy. . . . ”

  We both wanted to remember, as if the memories could summon the past to replace the unthinkable present.

  “I flash back to the excitement, always, before Wilson lifts the top to the barrel,” Christa said. “Will she come springing up from the bottom? I always replay in my mind her unveiling herself to us in her different various ways. It was always so exciting. And the first touches—everyone can’t get their hands in with her quick enough. I’m so glad I have pictures of Kali’s octopus hickeys on my arm. . . .”

  I phoned Anna.

  “It seems impossible,” I said. “Yesterday was so wonderful!”

  “I guess what I’ve discovered,” Anna said to me, “is what you do today doesn’t affect yesterday.” We could not change the fact of Kali’s death; but not even death could eradicate the joy of the day before. After losing a friend with whom she had shared every birthday, every success, every happiness of her youth, Anna knew: “Yesterday,” she assured me, “remains perfect.”

  I spent much of that Thursday on the phone, unable to do much of anything else. I canceled my date with my friends, who understood; of course, I could not go on with the tea, because a friend had died.

  “It takes a special person to understand what it means to have a friend who’s an octopus,” Anna told me. She imagined the conversation she might have with friends at school: “My friend died. Her name was Kali. ‘What is she, from India?’ No, she’s from British Columbia. The Pacific Ocean, actually. She’s an octopus.”

  I phoned Bill and left a message of condolence, but understandably he didn’t pick up or return the call. I called Wilson—as much for his opinion as an engineer as for his solace and friendship. How did Kali get out?

  “There’s only two ways she could have escaped,” he said. “Either she lifted up the lid—I’ve seen octopuses escape by lifting up a lid, even a heavy lid—or she escaped through a hole.” But this cover was even heavier than the one on Octavia’s tank, he said, “and it was on solid.” There was—and had to be—a hole in the cover, in order to admit the pipe bringing fresh seawater into the tank. And any gap not filled by the pipe, Wilson thought, no matter how small, must have provided the exit route Kali had taken.

  “This is no one’s fault,” Wilson stressed. “Bill did the best he could with what he had. It took us years to get Octavia’s tank to be relatively foolproof. I’m unhappy but not surprised. One thing I’ll do is talk to Bill and see what we can figure out. But we had no choice. We had to take the risk.”

  Kali was extremely lucky to have lived as long as she did. Most octopuses die as paralarvae. Only two in 100,000 hatchlings survive to sexual maturity—otherwise the sea would be overrun with octopuses. “And at least we know she had a good last day,” I said. “Yes,” said Wilson. “She had a day of freedom. And that she got out tells you a phenomenally inquisitive and intelligent creature wanted her freedom. We know, clearly, it must have taken a lot of effort to get out. A stupid animal wouldn’t do that.”

  “She died like a great explorer,” I said. Like the astronauts who died blasting off in Challenger, or the brave men who perished in attempts to find the source of the Nile, penetrate the Amazon, visit the poles, Kali had chosen to face unknown dangers in the quest to widen the horizons of her world.

  “Octopuses have their own intelligence that we can’t match,” Wilson said. “And hopefully we’ll learn from our mistakes. That’s the best we can do. After all,” he said, “we’re only human.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Karma

  Choice, Destiny, and Love

  Last summer, Bill completed a punishing “Tough Mudder” 12-mile obstacle course in Vermont, a gauntlet of mud, fire, icy water, 12-foot-high walls, and electric shocks. The day after the race, a benefit for wounded veterans, he got up at three in the morning and drove back to work. Yet Bill had looked better that morning than he does now, the first Wednesday since Kali’s death. Haggard, Bill comes down the stairs from Cold Marine to find me in front of Octavia’s tank.

  We hug long and hard. We don’t speak of Kali at first. Instead, we talk about his other animals. We start with the three lumpfish a few tanks down from Octavia’s. One of the normally gray fish has turned orange. “That’s the male, and he’s orange because he’s in breedi
ng condition,” Bill tells me with satisfaction. He translates the fish language: “See, he’s trying to impress the females with the nesting area he’s picked out.” Having selected a site for laying eggs in a corner among the boulders of the exhibit, the orange male is showing it off, carefully cleaning away algae and debris by blowing on the rocks. He blows at an urchin, sending it plodding away on the tube feet between its spines. An urchin can be a hazard because it might step on the lumpfish’s eggs. But so far, no eggs are in the offing. The two females, not yet in breeding condition, seem unimpressed by the male’s efforts. But Bill has high hopes. Two years ago, his lumpfish bred and produced eighty babies. “They are the cutest things!” Bill says. The babies he raised come to him when he leans over the tank, looking up into his face with their round eyes, chubby cheeks, and irresistible, astonished expressions.

  Together we marvel at the individuals in tank after tank in his gallery. He has cared for each one every day for the past nine years, and still they thrill him. “Look, there’s my basket star,” he says, as we move to the Eastport Harbor exhibit. “Unbelievable, this thing. They’re gorgeous.” The five-inch creature looks more like some crystalline mineral than like an animal. From a central disk like the center of a daisy, but with five radiating pairs of ridges, its five arms each divide into two equal branches, which divide again to slender, coiling branchlets more intricate than the rays of the most complex snowflake.

  A few steps to our left brings us before the Gulf of Maine’s Boulder Reef, a 4,000-gallon tank with 1,400 animals in it: among them, 400 red anemones, 200 sea cucumbers, 250 snipe fish, hundreds of baltemia, which look like rubbery plants but are in fact mollusks like Octavia and Kali, and the mysterious, sharklike chimera. Sinuous, ancient, and possessed of an otherworldly grace, she’s part cartilage, part bone, part angel, part ghost. He got her in 2007 as a mature female, he tells me. “She’s awesome,” Bill says. “I just love the way she moves.”