How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals

by Sy Montgomery

the animals with whom we’d shared our vibrant youth were rushing ahead of us into old age. Our days together were numbered.

To me, one of the most heartbreaking conditions of life on Earth is that most of the animals we love, with the exception of some parrots and tortoises, die so long before we do.

This is the gift great souls leave us when they die. They enlarge our hearts. They leave us a greater capacity for love.

In captivity, octopuses enjoy toys, often the same ones with which children play. Octopuses like to take apart and put together Mr. Potato Head. They play with Legos. They’ll unscrew the lids to jars to get a tasty crab inside—but they enjoy manipulating objects so much, they’ll often screw the lid back on when they’re through. To keep the many octopuses he’s known occupied, Wilson, an engineer and inventor, created a series of nesting Plexiglas boxes with different locks. Octopuses enjoyed unlocking box after box to retrieve a treat inside.