Daring Rescue: A Pictorial Essay (with Tentacles)

This morning on the Central Coast, my mum, the kids and I ventured down to Hardy's Bay to eat a massive breakfast engage with nature.

After we finished our milkshakes and toast appreciating the view, we wandered down to the waters edge to feed the ducks.

And there we saw the most hideous formidable creature.

This.

It's an octopus. That was probably obvious.

The octopus appeared to be.... well.... floundering. I don't know much about things with tentacles, but I'm pretty sure they need to be in water to survive.

I decided to rescue it. As I
a) don't know how to rescue marine life, and
b) didn't intend to touch the repulsive thing,
I had to come up with an alternate plan.

And then he showed up.

"Hello!" I said to the nice man nearby. "Will you rescue this poor octopus?"

This man is an Octopus Hunter. So we can't show you his face on the internet.

Matt turned out to live up the road but had no idea how to rescue octopi either. Or even if octopi was the correct plural form. (Okay, we didn't actually discuss that part of it.)

The kids and Matt and I stood considering the problem.

Pondering.

"Why don't we drag it with a stick?" my 12 year old asked. No-one really thought that was a great idea, but we decided to humour her.

Yeah. That didn't work.

My daughter then ran to the fishing shack to get advice. They told her to drag the octopus by the head back out to sea. Matt decided to give it a go. Problem was, we couldn't work out what was the actual head.

Do you reckon this is the head?

He tugged and dragged for a while, then a sweet local girl turned up and was roped into helping kindly offered her assistance.

She was wearing a hat. I'm sure that helped.

I stood on the sidelines taking photos and screeching giving invaluable assistance in the form of emotional support, encouragement and reassurance.

Eventually, they dragged the creature out to sea. The girl had to go home. As the kids and I cheered, Matt stood quietly in the water and contemplated his great triumph.

Matt the Hero, Octopus Saviour.

I suspect he got his boots wet.

We bade farewell to our new friend, and my daughter built an effigy in the sand to remind us all of the creature we left behind.

I suspect they both got swept away pretty quickly. But hey. We tried.

 

Have you ever rescued a real life living creature???