The Happy Squid.
Pinch a bayou squid and it will squish. A bayou squid’s head averages three inches long. Its tentacles are about four. Unlike cuttlefish, they are boneless. They feast on fish roe and water bug eggs, when they grow fat enough to swim through the lean months.
Held the right way, a bayou squid’s tentacles look like flower. You can look right at the squid’s mouth, which is a puckered beak. Squids mate but they don’t kiss. Neither do they hold hands.
Squids swim. They swim in the bayou the way birds fly through the air. In the water, squid are free. Watch them hypnotize you as they go, to and fro and back again, wherever they wish. Under the water line is a murky world of pure imagination. In the water, every squid is beautiful.
One time, on Bayou St. John, the last remaining bayou in New Orleans, the reason the city is here. there was a squid that drew the attention of all the newspapers. It was even on TV. It was after the age of newsreels, but the squid was once featured on Ripley’s Believe it or Not!
The squid would erupt from the water and then skim along the surface: bip! bip! big! It was only one squid that did it at a time. It was only one squid that did it. He was special.
Skippy was a wonderful squid.
Someone who will remain anonymous caught Skippy one day. It wasn’t easy. Now, Skippy is preserved in a jar, an exemplary specimen of squidus Orleanus.
