poeticwisdom.com

Muscles the Octopus

Octopuses, or octopi as the man who writes the dictionary calls them, have lots of arms. Eight, in fact. The big ones live in the Pacific Ocean because it’s warm there and sunny, and so they don’t have to buy gloves, which would be expensive for so many arms.

Muscles was a cheerful octopus who loved shaking hands. Right from when he was little and his uncle had said, “My! You’re quite a little man now,” and bent down and shook hands with him.

Muscles reflected that he was, in fact, a little octopus and not a little man, but felt very proud all the same. He thought that shaking hands was a very civilised way to pass the time. “When I grow up I think I’ll shake hands for a living,” he decided.
And that’s exactly what happened.

Muscles used to sit on a white rock in the middle of the ocean and shake hands with everyone who passed by. With so many arms, of course, he could shake hands with a lot of people at once. On busy days he said, “How do you do?” to as many as a huge number of people. So you can imagine how many friends he made.

Quite soon he was proclaimed the world’s champion hand shaker and even got interviewed about it on television. Every Christmas he received lots of Christmas cards saying “Hands across the sea!”

So famous was Muscles that they even named the rock upon which he sat Muscles Rock.
And for his friendliness towards the peoples of all nations they awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, which he ate. Very tasty it was, too.

Muscles, like everyone else, became hungry from time to time. Normally he just reached down with an arm into the sea alongside and grabbed a fish or two. Sometimes though, a crate of apples would be thrown to him from a passing New Zealand fruit ship.
Or a tourist would buy him an ice cream, sometimes eight, one for each hand. What luck!

One day, however, when he was a bit tired - he had been shaking hands with tourists from a queue of boats all day long - he tugged a sailor off a yacht and, without thinking, ate him.

Oops! Muscles did his best to tell everybody who would listen how sorry he was, and promised it would never, never happen again.

But the damage had been done. After that, nobody would shake hands with him any more. “Oh dear,” thought Muscles. “What a shame!”

However, it didn’t matter all that much. He had so many hands he was quite happy shaking hands with himself. And tourists kept on coming to see him and take photographs and throw food to him, albeit from a safe distance.

He’s still there. On a clear day you can see him sitting on his white rock in the sun, waving to passers-by. He has a young family now, eight of them, just enough for him to keep them out of trouble with a guiding hand. Some of them are already learning how to shake hands.