"[Said the father, who] was burned out on social media and worried about disappointing people. He didn’t want to answer any more questions. Ultimately, he simply deleted TikTok from his phone and left the story unfinished. 'I mean, what do you think?' Dr. Clifford asked me. 'How would you have finished it?' He was finishing it now, I said. What did he want people to know? He paused and then said that he wanted to thank his followers for their support and tell them that he had given these octopuses his all. 'I think the obvious lesson is that they’re not good pets,' he said. 'They’re not durable pets, they’re not cheap pets, they’re not easy pets....'"
From
"A Cautionary Tale of 408 Tentacles/One pet octopus suddenly became more than four dozen. They went viral. Then it all went south" (NYT).
To see the story of the little boy who loved octopuses and the dentist dad who made the boy's dream come true and displayed the the dream — while it lasted — go to the doctoktopus TikTok page:
here.
Posts
38 comments:
Being a dad is a tough job. I hope he's able to help his son through it, they'll both come out better for it if he can. But that's a tough time for the little tyke.
Pets die. Some more quickly than others. Growing up, I was always told we couldn't have a dog because it's too sad when they died. I'm 3 1/2 years younger than my sister, but my sister had 2 dogs. She had the dogs and she experienced the sadness when they died, the sadness that my mother refused to see a child of hers go through another time.
Both dogs were cocker spaniels named Honey. Both got hit by a car. That was back in the days when people let their dogs out to just run around the neighborhood. It was the dog's responsibility to avoid misadventures.
It's a chance to teach octal, though octal has fallen to hexadecimal now as the going system.
Except for a few long-lived animals (birds, some reptiles), people outlive their pets and saying goodbye is part of the experience. It's valuable, even if it's not funny.
In Spain and Portugal they have many delicious ways to serve octopus. I doubt if anybody keeps one as a pet.
At some point in the future, the Althouse Blog will go the way of the DocOckTikTok page. That will be a sad day. The nature of life is to change.
Hey, dentist, leave them squids alone
Octopus Rescue...
Yeah, that's the ticket. Can we get Squidward to give us a PSA? Offer him a new clarinet or something.
The local folks with Poodle Rescue can be our sherpa. Those folks are the gold standard. They're mostly lawyers, you know.
“Both dogs were cocker spaniels named Honey. Both got hit by a car. That was back in the days when people let their dogs out to just run around the neighborhood.”
I had a cocker spaniel at 5 yo that was killed by a car, the dog was crazy and went ape every time I let it out of the house. But it was not going to be an indoor dog. It had several screws loose or missing.
There's a YouTube channel operated by someone who brought home a supermarket lobster in box and kept it in a tank as a pet rather than boil it in a pot like a reasonable person. I visited that channel from time to time, but never subscribed. That would be too encouraging. The marine tank he set up for his pet was quite large, at 100 gallons. (I believe the gentlemen was some disingenuous about "deciding to keep a store-bought lobster as a pet" as a spur of the moment act of clemency. Setting up a marine tank, whether tropical or cold-water, is project that takes about a month's preparation before anything macroscopic can take up residence.) Granted, my neighborhood market keeps lobsters in a tank of cold seawater, but the tenants are short-term residents only. To keep a North Atlantic lobster long-term requires more than the correct salinity and temperature. It takes pressure. True lobsters are denizens of the continental shelf. Lobstermen set their pots down pretty deep, as much as 50 fathoms. Even an institutional aquarium can't replicate that pressure. Well, the YouTube Lobster is dead now. The content creator got his clicks and his ad revenue. I hope he's happier than his former pet was.
I'm not certain a cocker spaniel, or any spaniel, is a suitable suburban pet. Cockers are gun dogs with the brains bred out of them. Their instinctive drives make them more vulnerable to traffic than some other breeds.
The first dog I recall was Tuppy, as brainless as she was beautiful. I came home from school one day--first grade, we hadn't moved east yet--to find that she was no longer among us.
I don't recall any story or cover story to explain it, and honestly didn't miss her that much.
I got a dachshund for my eleventh birthday. Great dog at a great time for American dogs and kids. He ran free, and survived a few close calls on the streets but finally got run over at the age of nine.
Him, I missed.
Tuppy was a Cocker. That got lost in the editing.
The want a dog/don’t want a dog argument reared it’s ugly head this weekend a couple times, once when it was discovered a prominent caddie/tv personality is suffering the conflict with the wife. Hard to think of a worse profession for a dog’s person to have- never home, constant disruption. Dogs insist on routine. A routine of stuff they love doing is better. The best professions for a dog’s person: Shepherd, golf course superintendent, professional sporting guide- fish, ducks, quail…
Things that taste good shouldn’t be pets…
"Both dogs were cocker spaniels named Honey."
Naming a cocker "Honey" is stone-cold obvious -- just one of ten thousand other Honeys. (Being bred for than silken coat that women tend to coo over enviously is why cockers are mindless lunatics.) But naming the successor "Honey" is kinda bizarre. That fixation on a pet's name is the gist of a running joke on The Simpsons that is at least 35 seasons long. What do you name a black cat if creativity or even interest in the particular cat's personality is of no consequence? Snowball, of course. How drole. To be followed by Snowballs II, III, IV, and V, weather and Dr. Hibbert's E-Class Mercedes-Benz permitting.
I used to date a woman whose ambition is to own two black pugs named "Napoleon" and "Josephine". I had the temerity to ask why. The reader's imagination can proceed from here.
Tentaclastrophe.
https://youtu.be/9hnUDthcQcE?si=17RuAuTyZoqWNuXX
Horror, Eva Marie. Pure horror.
Octopi are the tribbles of the sea?
Another story about the Octomom?
"Another story about the Octomom?"
Yet another blip that failed to paint on my pop culture PPI. So I look her up........ Yep, yet another three minute fruitlessly deducted from my lifespan.
"But naming the successor "Honey" is kinda bizarre."
Imagine you had a little daughter, perhaps 1 year old, and your honey-colored cocker spaniel just got killed. If what my parents did seems bizarre, I invite you to sojourn in the world of the human beings for a few moments. The picture may clear up.
The last dog I had as a kid was still at home when I went off to college. He was killed by a car when I was away. My mother lied about it and told me he ran away. She never told me the truth, but I found out, and she didn't admit it until I was in my 30s. I guess I was still Mom's little boy needing protection from grief. I lost my mom about 6 years ago. I think she ran away. She'll come back when she's ready.
"Where's that Golden of yours?"
"Oh, he's in the yard."
Leave the fucking wildlife where it is. How many times do I need to say it?
kurt eichenwald enters the chat
"I invite you to sojourn in the world of the human beings for a few moments. The picture may clear up."
I have sojourned in the world of human beings for many moments and found little that is not bizarre or inexplicable. The picture has not cleared up, nor have I confidence it ever will.
My parents owned a dog when I was born. According to my mother's account of my early life, the dog's name was the first discernable word to issue from my mouth. Consequently, one might assume the animal was significant to Little Quaestor. Nevertheless, I have no memory of the dog or the word, only the narrative of my first intelligible utterance told to me when I was a preschooler, and I photo of a baby (me presumably) in a stroller accompanied by a Labrador retriever.
I invite Althouse to think about a scheme to deceive a toddler regarding mortality that is not bizarre by definition.
tcrosse said...
In Spain and Portugal they have many delicious ways to serve octopus. I doubt if anybody keeps one as a pet.
Greece too. As well as all over the Caribbean. Our local Costcos and other supermarkets have them fresh and frozen.
Delicious.
Great fun for bothering small grandchildren.
John Henry
"The octopus is on the roof and won't come down..."
John Henry
Sounds like one of George Carlin's sentences never heard before.
Did someone say octopus and Portugal and delicious? Heck, yeah, they did, and they were darn right to do so!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tCsNAotabvc
I note in passing that our family had two sequential Cocker Spaniels, wonderful but incredibly stupid pets, both of whom also died from vehicular impact. Amazingly, both were hit while chasing my parents in their cars, although years apart.One had attempted suicide earlier by catching a squirrel, then trying to eat it whole. My father saved its life with a rapid skwerlectomy, facilitated and effectuated by grabbing the choking dog by its neck and the dead rodent by its tail and pulling in opposite directions. What is it with Cockers?
Madison used to have a leash law for cats. I think most people got around it by keeping their cats indoors (not hard in winter), but I can't recall ever seeing a cat on a leash or tethered in a yard when we lived there. Dogs, yes; cats, not so much.
"What is it with Cockers?"
Whenever dogs are selectively bred for coat color or coat texture, DNA sequences linked to intelligence leak out of the gene pool like water through a sieve.
This may apply to cat genetics as well. A plain-Jane gray tabby sports a disruptive camouflage pattern that works quite well for any temperate zone forest-dwelling feline hunter and is without doubt ancestral to Felis catus. The other colorations are either artifacts of domestication similar to color changes observed by Belyayev and Trutt in foxes, or products of deliberate selective breeding. Tabbies can get by without us, whereas a Persian can hardy navigate from its food dish to the favorite chair its pea-brain delights in ruining without human intervention.
...hardly navigate
Sheesh, what a poor proofreader am I.
It says here that cats on leashes are not good for them.
https://www.berrypatchfarms.net/cats-on-a-leash-bad-idea/
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