YOU HUMANS LOVE COOKIES. I ASSUME YOU KNOW WHICH food I mean?
Circular, about the size of a common clamshell. Some are flecked with dark bits, others are painted or dusted with powder. Cookies can be soft and quiet, moving soundlessly on their journey through human jaws. Cookies can be loud and messy, bits breaking off at the bite, crumbs tumbling down a chin, adding to the flotsam on the floor that the elderly female called Tova must sweep. I have observed many cookies during my captivity here. They are sold in the packaged food machine near the front entrance.
Imagine my confusion, then, at the remark made by Dr.
Santiago earlier this evening.
“What can I say, Terry?” Dr. Santiago raised her shoulders and held her hands up. “I’ve seen a lot of octopuses, but you’ve got a smart cookie here.”
They were discussing the so-called puzzle: hinged box made of clear plastic with a latch on the lid. There was a crab inside. Terry lowered it into my tank. He and Dr. Santiago leaned down to peer through the glass. Without delay, I seized the box, opened the latch, lifted the lid, and ate the crab.
It was a red rock crab, one that was molting. Soft and juicy. I consumed it in a single bite.
This did not please Terry and Dr. Santiago. They frowned and they argued. I gathered they anticipated my dismantling of the box to take longer.
I am a smart cookie. Well, of course I am intelligent. All octopuses are. I remember each and every human face that pauses to gaze at my tank. Patterns come readily to me. I
know how the sunrise will play on the upper wall at dawn, shifting each day as the season progresses.
When I choose to hear, I hear everything. I can tell when the tide is turning to ebb, outside the prison walls, based on the tone of the water crashing against the rocks. When I choose to see, my vision is precise. I can tell which particular human has touched the glass of my tank by the fingerprints left behind. Learning to read their letters and words was easy.
I can use tools. I can solve puzzles.
None of the other prisoners have such skills.
My neurons number half a billion, and they are distributed among my eight arms. On occasion, I have wondered whether I might have more intelligence in a single tentacle than a human does in its entire skull.
Smart cookie.
I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine.
What a preposterous thing to say.
