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

by Sy Montgomery

People often speak of a lifetime dog, a phrase that may have been coined by the author and fellow border collie owner Jon Katz. “They’re dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable ways,” he’s said. Tess was our lifetime dog.

This bit deadass had me crying on my couch

I desperately wanted this octopus to be my friend.

The moment the aquarist opened the heavy lid to her tank, she slid over to inspect me. Her dominant eye swiveled in its socket to meet mine, and four or five of her four-foot-long boneless arms, red with excitement, reached toward me from the water.

But this was an earthbound alien—someone who could change color and shape, who could pour her baggy forty-pound body through an opening smaller than an orange.

“Come shake hands (8) when you can.”

Her red skin signaled her excitement. I was excited too. She had my left arm up to the elbow encased in three of hers, and my right arm held firmly in another. There was no way I could resist.

I could read Sally’s feelings in a glance, even if the only part of her I could see was her tail, or one ear.

But in addition to food, octopuses like to find stuff and take it home.

Octopuses like to take apart and put together Mr. Potato Head.

Octavia enjoyed me, I think, because we liked to play with each other. Our games weren’t like baseball or dolls. They were more like versions of patty cake, but with suckers.

At one point that first year with Octavia, I had to skip my weekly visit to Boston in order to attend an octopus symposium in Seattle. When I returned to the New England Aquarium and Wilson opened her tank, Octavia jetted to my side and extended her arms to me with enthusiasm as unmistakable as Sally’s puffy smile. The octopus immobilized both my arms, sucking them so hard, I would have hickeys that lasted for days. We stayed together for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Watching Octavia was like a meditation. I emptied out my mind, sweeping a space clean to let her in.

In each caress, each cleaning, each hour of steadfast protection of this mother’s eggs, I could see the ancient shape of life’s first love.

“The universe,” he’s reported to have said, “is alive, and has fire in it, and is full of gods.”

He trusts that something good is always about to happen—because it’s true.