“CJ” the Giant Pacific Octopus was born in a cranny in the Salish Sea as the presumable sole survivor of several thousand larvae. after somewhere around a year of carefree crabeating he crawled into a strange box and found himself abducted by aliens for a tour of Ambassadorial Duty.
CJ dwelt in a large tank on the main aquarium floor for about 6 months. during this time he developed a highly specialized routine that consisted of napping, napping, glaring at guests, and more napping. many aquarium octopus love looking at people, exploring their tank, and swimming around for exercise, but CJ loved cramming all 50 pounds of his intricately evolved mollusc body under a rock.
though I respected CJ’s lifestyle, I did often wish he’d come out more, because he sure cut a majestic figure. he was one of the biggest we’d had in a while, but few got to be duly impressed by his size and grace when he was most content as a collapsed glob with two lumpy eyeballs sticking out. one time, though, I watched him use two arms to rip the feeding stick out of the keeper’s hands and drag it into his man cave. he got bored with it in a matter of seconds and cast it out again.
he was released without incident and probably swam off grumbling, “Good riddance!”