![]() She usually accepted frozen food, but everyone says that octopuses prefer live prey and it didn't take Serendipity long to find some of her own. Her arm web enclosed the food, but through her skin you could still see its clear outline as her little beak gnawed away at it. I thrilled at the sensation when her arms caressed my fingers, curling and tickling as she took the crustacean cube. I would pop out these tiny cubes one at a time and lower them into the water until most of my arm was submerged, cautiously approaching Serendipity's lair. I fed Serendipity cubes of frozen brine shrimp, which I kept in the kitchen freezer-the only "meat" in our vegetarian household. I was pretty sure that she was a girl because I could never see a hectocotylized arm, though I was also aware that its invisibility was no guarantee of its absence. I named Serendipity after my favorite literary sea monster. I still have my childhood copy of this book. And then the time came to introduce them to my first octopus, Serendipity. I wasn't especially partial to the fish, but I did have a weakness for any living thing that came under my care, so I gave them names and talked to them. I started with a couple of hardy blue damselfish to cycle the tank and make sure it was habitable before bringing home a precious, precious octopus. Everything that I did squeeze around the tank-bookshelves, desk, dresser-sooner or later became encrusted with salt. Fortunately I had a loft bed, or it never would have fit. We ended up with a sixty-gallon aquarium and there wasn't room for much else in my bedroom once it was installed. (Even the small species like a lot of space.) To raise the money for it, I sold the American Girl "Samantha" doll that I had saved up for years to buy-it felt like years, anyway, and I think it may in fact have been more than twelve months. Once upon a time, many years before Craigslist, my dad and I pored over pages and pages of pennysavers, looking for an affordable aquarium big enough to house an octopus. ![]() To honor all the world's eight-armed species, today seems like a good day to elaborate on that story. Shortly after returning home, with my father’s patient support, I procured a secondhand saltwater aquarium and became known at school as “the girl with the pet octopus.” At the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, I stood mesmerized by the rippling skin, the undulating arms, and the intimate eyes of a giant Pacific octopus. I met my first cephalopod on a family road trip when I was ten years old. The book's introduction includes a brief account of a very special episode in my life: That's right, it's Octopus Day-the first of the annual Cephalopod Awareness Days! My book Squid Empire came out just in time, and that's not a complete coincidence. the beginning of the most chromatophore-rific, jet-tacular time of the year! It's time to sing "Hearts of Three, They're For Me"* and bake suction-cupcakes. It's October 8th, and we all know what that means.
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