A Chance Meeting~

Cephalapod: from Greek kephal? ‘head’ + pous, pod- ‘foot.’ A class of active predatory mollusks comprising octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish.

The other day my husband Alan and I took our usual morning walk. It takes us down along the Caribbean where soft tongues of salt water lick tirelessly at the shore. There we shed our shoes and walk barefoot, scrubbing the soles of our feet and getting some exercise along the mile or so of little bays lined with palms.

Our dogs usually scavenge out ahead on the off chance of flushing out some buzzards or shore birds minding their own business. Most often they nose about and stir things up before we get a chance to see them, but their world is on land; they seldom get their feet wet, preferring instead to mark various logs strewn about the beach or the thick underbrush between the coconuts.

It was for this reason that we had the rare opportunity to see a small octopus in the shallows as we walked along the edge of the sea.

He (or, in all fairness, perhaps it was a she) was submerged in about ten inches of water and so well camouflaged I'm not sure why he caught my eye, but perhaps it was the movement.

When we first spotted him he was a mottled sand color with flecks of black, making himself appear like a bit of coral he moved through. He inched himself along using his long tentacles to finger his way forward, sideways, or backwards in his hunt for food.

We could clearly see his eyes that alternately bulged out of his head and retracted completely out of sight. According to Scientists their vision is acute, able to distinguish the shape, size and horizontal plane of their victims. They are also extremely intelligent.

I saw a National Geographic program about octopuses recently and the documentary demonstrated their ability to learn and remember a very complex maze in order to get to the treat at the end. The final step of the maze actually made the octopus go completely out of the water, if only briefly. He paused at the brink momentarily, felt about with his tentacle and then... bloop, he bridged the gap, swooping to the end of the maze to collect the tasty morsel as a prize. Incredible.

I also watched an amazing video, filmed by David Miller, of an octopus problem solving off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The octopus in question reached out on either side of himself to pull two large shell halves toward him. Fiddling about with them for a moment he tucked his head into one half and then pulled the other half over his head like a sandwich, effectively hiding from any predators that might pass.

Our octopus didn't have to perform for anyone; he was simply hunting and we were fortunate enough to be allowed to observe him for a time. Eventually the bigger of our two dogs, Campeón, came down to see what we were staring at and plodded out into the water. In a split second the octopus changed from his coral coloring to a deep brownish purple, enlarged his mantle, squirted a jet of ink and sped off to safety about 12 feet away. They move by jet propulsion, taking water in through gills and ejecting it out the back. However it works, he was very very fast. We moved down the beach while our dog snuffed at the inky fingers left in the water. The octopus was busy burying himself in the sand and had already changed to mimic the color as he disappeared from sight.

It was a brief encounter, as are most encounters with wild things, but a most enjoyable one.