Cephalopodish at TerraNullius (Italy)

More than a year ago I posted about some tiny stories starring cephalopods. Though I've written quite a few miniature stories of late, I haven't sent them out, and so it's entirely to the credit of Italian poet Alessandra Bava that these appear in Italy's TerraNullius. I love being asked. Thank you, Alessandra.

Need octopi and cuttlefish in your day? Jump in here.

What's that? That's the w-shaped eye of a cuttlefish looking at you, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Kraken2

P. S. to the Kraken! post: Be sure and read Scott Bailey's clerihews at Six Words for a Hat (post and comments.) I'm afraid that I challenged him to a Chernyshevsky clerihew. This came about because his posts about Henrik Pontoppidan seeped into my head, and so I wrote a clerihew about Henrik Pontoppidan the novelist's ancestor (I suppose), Erik Pontoppidan the bishop, who had an interesting connection to cephalopods. So I blamed the Pontoppidan clerihew on Scott, and then remembered he was now writing about Chernyshevsky. Tada! I think I deserve chocolate for spelling Chernyshevsky, Pontoppidan, and cephalopods correctly (or close enough) in one post.

Kraken!

Octopus courtesy of Gisela Royo
of Barcelona, Spain and sxc.hu

I have been having fun yesterday and today with my cephalopod stories, mentioned in the last post--there are seven tiny fictions plus an eighth piece, a clerihew for Erik Pontoppidan. And all that goes to show that blog visitors and bloggers can influence my mind because I'm not sure if I would have gone for eight (although so very appropriate when one is contemplating cephalopods), were it not for RT (aka Tim) mentioning numerology yesterday.

Then toward the end of these somewhat bizarre fictions, I suddenly wanted to write a clerihew. That is rather like eating, say, a rather piggish amount of cilantro-pineapple ice and suddenly wanting hoecake on the griddle. I suppose that is why Scott G. F. Bailey's posts on Henrik Pontoppidan popped into my head--at which point it was only natural to leap from Danish Henrik to Danish Erik because Bishop Erik Pontoppidan wrote about the Kraken, and the Kraken is surely a cephalopod.

And I must go and do a little drudgery, now that I have finished my cephalopodish frolic!

Cephalopodish

Photograph courtesy of merchant mariner John Boyer,
who is sometimes based in Kuwait, and sxc.hu

The octopus is so intelligent that it is considered an Honorary Vertebrate for legal purposes in the UK. I wonder if octopi are insulted by this. Perhaps they haven't been told.

I've been writing tiny stories lately, and the thought of one involving a cuttlefish or octopus has crept into a crevice of my head and is holding on tight. Octopi in captivity play with toys and have preference for one human over another. I love the idea that cuttlefish and octopi, with their famous ability to transform appearance, may see with their skin.