By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Octopus Update
Letter writer Barbara King rightly takes me to task for making light of Detroit Red Wings fans flinging dead octopi on the hockey rink ice to celebrate playoff wins.
Last week’s column recounts how the tradition started in 1952 when two Detroit fishmongers tossed an eight-armed mollusk to symbolize the eight wins the Wings needed to capture the Stanley Cup.
The practice has not just persisted, it has spread. In the 2006 playoffs, Edmonton Oilers fans hurled Alberta beefsteaks onto their home ice. When they tried that at away games, they got arrested. Nashville Predators followers throw catfish. A San Jose Sharks fan flung a 3-foot leopard shark.
Red Wings Zamboni driver Al Sobotka, who at one game scooped 36 octopi off the ice, used to twirl them over his head before the National Hockey League said no more.
King, an Emerita Professor of Anthropology at William & Mary who apparently saw last week’s column at her home in Gloucester, Virg., replied my rant missed every point. See her letter elsewhere on this page.
And she’s right: the practice is barbaric. Imagine flinging dead humans — or worse, live ones — into war zones. It’s been done forever, but still seems unseemly.
“Why not prioritize,” King asks, “over the juvenile mocking of animal advocates, genuine kindness for the magnificent creature with whom we share the earth?”
Why not both? I parry. I have cats who sleep on me, dogs I feed, pet and play with; birds, bunnies, fish … “Abuse an animal, go to jail” reads a bumper sticker on my car.
Can I cherish these creatures with who I share the world and my house, yet still mock juvenile animal extremist stunts? It is not just my right but duty.
I nonetheless applaud Professor King for pointing these things out. Ditto Nicole Meyer, PETA Senior Media Officer, whose letter sheds more light on the situation.
First, she correctly assumes last week’s column was dusted off from some time ago. June 1, 2017 actually, amid a PETA effort to discourage Wings fans from throwing octopi, perhaps replacing them with plush mollusks.
This seems reasonable, though in eight years hence hasn’t been effective. The team’s mascot remains Al the Octopus; (see photo nearby), fish markets near the rink sell pre-dead octopi packed cold and sold with instructions on how to throw them.
We’re a sick species, I’ll admit. When we’re not throwing octopi on the ice, we’re eating them. The lone solace: we’re not alone. Everything eats everything.
“Octopuses Invade the English Coast, ‘Eating Anything in Their Path,’” not The National Enquirer but New York Times wrote last month.
Seems climate change, hoax thought it be, is suspected cause of cephalopod swarms invading southern English shores, devouring crabs and lobsters.
“They are ferocious animals,” says Brixham fish market manger Barry Young. “You can just imagine the devastation they were causing as they were going through, eating anything in their path.”
Why not celebrate these magnificent shellfish with whom they share the sea? Do the octopi bother asking before they suck decapods out of their shells live and eat them? Don’t lobsters have feelings too?
When life gives you octopi, not crabs, salt the cephalopods overnight, simmer them two hours in boiling water with onion and bay leaf, let them cool overnight, then chargrill and serve them with hummus sauce, advises restaurateur Robert Simonetti.
“We sell tons of them. Taste like strong lobster,” Simonetti says.
Nonetheless, I will strive to be more sensitive to these creatures before they attack me. That’s what happened to a San Antonio boy, 6, this July and a man just this month who tapped on another octopus tank till the animal launched out and latched onto his face.
Armed and dangerous indeed.
