Suckers

A Boston Adventure

If you've read Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, you'll know that the plural form is not “octopi” but “octopuses”. (The word comes from Greek, not Latin.) You'll also know that Sy lives in New England and became a frequent guest at Boston’s New England Aquarium to visit and learn about the octopuses. But you may not know that I interviewed her for the BioLogos podcast last year and that we hit it off so we'll that she invited Colin and me (that's also correct grammar, by the way, not “Colin and I”) to come visit the creatures with her sometime. We took her invitation literally and have been trying to make this trip happen for about six months.

So today we met her and some aquarium personnel in the lobby, where they gave us special Behind the Scenes stickers to put on our shirts. These were also meant literally, and they took us up some back stairs where we accessed the tanks from behind the public gallery. One of those tanks is home to Sedna, a five year old giant Pacific octopus, which more than a 10 ft. wingspan (or legspan, I guess). We were able to put our arms in the tank and let Sedna “taste” us. I'm not sure if that is literal in physiological terms (I don't think she was pre-digesting us), but she certainly used her suckers to sense our skin.

Sy calls this experience “being kissed by an alien”. I'm quite sure that's not literal, but I'm not sure how to describe it literally. I attributed a kind of affection to her, and the suction was impressive (Sy said she sometimes goes home with hickies). But I'm not sure I'd call it a kiss. More like someone who is curious and wants to know more about you, but doesn't have words to ask you things, and instead has to suck on your skin to learn interesting things about you. How much interesting stuff do you keep on your skin? Evidently there is a quite a chemical trail there of where you’ve been lately and what kind of food you’ve eaten.

I hope this video captures a but of the experience. It certainly shows off her graceful movement in the water.

Sadly, Sedna is about at the end of her life. They think she only has a month or two left to live. Because of this the Aquarium has just acquired a new octopus (hence the concern with plurals). He hasn't been officially named yet, but his handler thinks they'll settle on “Murphy”. He's only been at the aquarium for two weeks, and so is still in a quarantine tank. We also got to reach in and play with him. It was so fun, kind of like petting a cat, but also very different. Several times he had me covered up to my elbows with suckers. I could have done it all day, but the water is kept at 49 degrees, so my arms got pretty numb.

Afterwards we went and recorded with Sy about the experience and will turn that into a podcast episode at some point.

Sy Montgomery and me outside of Sedna’s tank (you can just see her in the background keeping an eye on us)

Then got a tour of the aquarium’s endangered species from one of the educators there. It was a full day.

Then for the evening we had dinner with my cousin Bev (and her husband and daughter) outside of Fenway Park.

Then Colin and I saw the game from inside the park. It didn’t start off so well, as the Phillies got off to a 4-0 lead. But the good guys came back for the win.

Here’s a funny story about the game: in the 9th inning we were up 8-5, which means it was a save situation, which means that we’d be bringing in Kenley Jansen to pitch. He is toward the end of his career now, and 3rd all-time on the MLB save list. The first batter he faced was Bryce Harper. When I saw that, I thought “I need to get a photo of Jansen pitching to Harper, because both of these guys are going to be in the Hall of Fame. But Harper swung at the first pitch and got a hit, so I missed that opportunity. But then I took this photo, which has Harper on 2nd base and Jansen pitching to Alex Bohm. The result of this exact pitch was a foul ball that came back our way, rattled around the box next to us. I said to Colin (who was sitting on the aisle), “Go get it!”, which he did. And now has a nice souvenir.

Here is the ball that Kenley Jansen pitched, with some pretty impressive scuff marks from hitting the cement next to us.

Pretty fun stuff!

Off to Harvard tomorrow (which starts in one minute… sorry for the late email… I hope you have your notifications turned off!) for interviews.