http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/07/an-elephant-octopus-mural-on-the-streets-of-london-by-alexis-diaz/
All of you know of my love of all things Octopus. Many of you know of my passion for Elephants. However, most of you may not know that I have a small brass dancing Ganesh. It sits beside my revolving Buddha w/temple and my black wooden Crow-Bear (mother-father) totem.
I've always had an affinity for animals and spirits. I've always felt I could talk to both. Ask my family and friends, they'll tell you.
When I was young, shy and sad, I spent a great amount of time in nature alone or with my dog. Also as a child, I'd play with the local farm animals. As a teenager, Mrs. Avery, my mother's neighbor, would go for long treks with the Sierra and Appalachian clubs. She had a menagerie of reptiles, birds, dogs, and cats. I learned how to feed them all (with living, frozen and processed food) and care for them all while she was away. My first paid job (age 10) was working at Mrs. Donaldson's chicken farm. I collected, sorted, weighed and boxed the eggs. Fed and watered the chickens. Cleaned the coop and made any simple repairs; while reporting major breaches or health issues with the hens.
The National Audubon Society had a presence in my town. It is called Drumlin Farm and it is a Wildlife Sanctuary. Wild animals are brought there when they can no longer survive in the wild. They are then used as natural science ambassadors. Naturalists then teach, the old and young alike, about the animals specific place on the planet and the natural order of things.
As a teenager, I had a friend who worked their. She helped with the behind the scenes work with the animals and did some work prior to a Wildlife Rehab person coming to take or mend an animal. My friend's name was Carolyn Glass. but then she was a straight A student who worked and played hard. Her parent's had fox hunting horses that we'd barrel race and gallup over trails through out town to let off steam. From work, she'd call me and ask me to ride my bike down to Drumlin to hold a raptor while she fixed a wing, or coddle an abandoned baby raccoon with she took blood or vitals. She would later go on to become a wildlife, jet-set Vet (flying to Alaska with Roger Payne to do Whale research and initiating the Save the Florida Panther campaign), and after succumbing to depression, and her impatience with humanity to wake up environmentally, she put herself to sleep like a big cat. But that is another, complex, layered and still aching story. (Her sister wrote a book about parts of it: I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass ~ although I'll always call her Julie).
When I moved onto the boat, I had all kinds of critters whose lives I followed. In Maine, Hawks, fish, owls, deer, fox and many more. In St. Croix the tropical fish and rainforest animals captured my heart. But none so much as the octopus who lived in the harbor.
I was working building cabinets, nurse stations and basically any wooden furniture you'd see/use in a hospital. There was a new hospital going up in Sunny Isle, the center of the island, and we had the furniture contract. I'd come home from work every day full of sawdust and debris. I'd row out to the boat, tie up the skiff, go below decks, peel off my clothes, but on a suit and go swimming. Some days I got home later than other days. My usual swim route was from the boat to the cay in the center of the harbor and back. It was a good way to work out my tired and tense muscles and catch flashes of fish after work.
I began to want to see more than flashes of fish and started swimming with a mask and snorkel at some point. I knew what everyone's anchor or mooring looked like. Where the Groupers ate, where to find the biggest conch and so on. Someone had abandoned an old engine block that they'd used for a morning and I'd just swim straight over it each day. But I began to notice a very distinct shell pile growing by one end of the block. It was only 17 (channel end) to 7 feet (cay end) deep. So I free dove down on the block. I looked in cylinder and what did I see? A sleepy eye looking back at me!
Long story short, the octopus and I became friends. Every day I'd stop by, get closer, hover longer and eventually it would climb on me, much to our mutual delight. It also once gave me a very rare shell...
One day I cam home from work and was just about to tie up to the boat when I saw Cary, who worked the Hobie Cats on the beach of the Cay Hotel, shouting and singling to me. I shoved off and rowed over to the beach. A woman with a frame much like mine, with blond hair and a bikini like mine (I was young and it was the tropics) was having conniptions in chest deep water. Cary had been easing her back into the quardoned off swimming section of the beach so that my pal, the octopus could stay wet. You see, he thought that this snorkeling and curious woman from New York was me. When she approached the shell pile she was only wanting to see dead shells, not be met by a living octopus!
I helped the woman back in the water, put my arm against hers and the octopus quickly climbed onto me. I swam with octopus and skiff back to above it's block and watched it pulse it's way back home. I never saw it again. Octopus are incredibly sensitive and they can die from emotional shock. In my mind's eye, he moved farther out, towards the reef, into the coral grottos that are good for catching lobsters with guitar strings, but that's what I want to believe.
Jumping ahead to elephants, as I must get some sleep (you see I could write books on critters), and I'll skip the Galapagos for now.
The last book I represented was written by Caitlin O'Connell's The Elephant's Secret Sense. I represented her, even though I'd stopped being an agent. I'd transitioned from representing an author to 20-30 editors to presenting one book to 20-30 students at at time. Part of how I chose the High School age to teach was after working at Drumlin Farm as a Naturalist when I first returned to MA , at the age of 40, having left when I was 17. I'd been teaching for 4-5 years when Caitlin approached me. Caitlin's book is magnificent and I hope to one day volunteer my meager services to her in Namibia, Malaysia or Maui. Please read all her books on Elephants or go see her at the Explorers Club in NYC in April. She is also leading some research on the reefs in Hawaii and The British Virgin Islands.
Octopus and Elephants. For those of us who love animals; they are some of the most adaptive and easy to reason with as a human. Yes, REASON, but that's another story.
Which brings me Ganesh...the remover of obstacles. I gathered him up after a 4 day Seminar with Deepak Chopra the summer I asked for my divorce. The lessons and the mediation skills I learned at that retreat have sustained me through a tough time and now are feeding this new discipline of writing each night.
So Good Night, Octophants and Ganesh lovers around the globe, G'night!
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