Manjula goes blogging...

The university I attended as an undergraduate was very conveniently located on the beach. We didn’t have clear waters year round, so when clearer waters pushed closer to shore, skipping classes to go diving did not weigh terribly on our conscience. One such clear-water morning, my dive buddy Filio suggested we go skin diving around the pillars of the local pier to catch fish for our marine tanks. At the bottom of one of the pier pillars, we discovered an empty mussel shell with a baby octopus inside. Now, the octopus is quite intelligent and a very interesting animal to have in one’s tank. So, Filio climbed up the pier pillars to bring down our collecting boxes, while I was assigned the pleasant task of bobbing in the warm green-blue waters holding the mussel shut tight with the octopus inside between my two palms. Easy task! A few minutes later, unbelievably, the little octopus squeezed one tentacle out from between the two shut halves of the mussel, followed by another, and yet another… I squeezed my palms together as tightly as I could, but he pushed the two halves of the shell apart, slithered out from between my palms, and took off permanently. I was left in complete disbelief! Filio returned with boxes to an empty mussel and an explanation he didn’t quite believe,… but I had been sufficiently humbled by a baby octopus…