Wrestling With an Octopus

This is one of my granddaughters' favorite stories. And it is true!

I was in the Bahamas for a sales conference. One afternoon of the conference we had been set free to enjoy the recreation available there on Paradise Island, Nassau.

I had planned to go scuba diving, but the weather was nasty. It actually snowed in Miami, Florida that day, and was the only time in recorded history that it had snowed in the Bahamas. It did not snow where I was, but at Freeport, an island a few miles north, they actually had snowflakes. The sea was very rough, and no one was able to go out scuba diving, or much of anything else either.

I decided to just go beach combing. Much of that area is built up coral. Coral is the remains, or skeletons of coral polyps, that has been built up over centuries. The coral where I was was mostly a dark gray, not the pink that often comes to mind when thinking of coral.

Sea urchins eat coral. There were many tidal pools in the coral. I could see some of the black spiny sea urchins moving around in some of the pools, where they had eaten holes down into the coral. The holes were filled with sea water from high tide that covered the area.

As I walked around, I spotted a large snail shell sitting at the bottom of one pool. The pool was about two feet across and two feet deep. The snail shell was about the size of a small fist. I thought it might make a nice souvenir for my children.

I reached down into the pool and grasped the shell. Suddenly I felt something grab me! Something had grabbed my hand! What a shock! I yanked my arm out of the pool.

I looked back down into the pool and could see nothing except the shell. I wanted to know what kind of creature was protecting that shell.

I looked around and found a stick about four feet long. I returned to the pool and prodded the shell with the stick. Then I saw an octopus tentacle reach out from a crevice near the bottom of the pool and wrap around my stick.

I thought to myself, I'd like to see the whole octopus. I let the octopus get a good grip on the stick, and attempted to pull it out into the open. It was much too shy to let me get it out of its crevice. It let go of the stick and retracted out of sight.

I then worked up the courage to once again reach down into the pool. I grabbed my snail shell. It was empty, the octopus had already extracted the contents.

Poor octopus lost his prized shell. I had my souvenir.