Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1883 — OH, THE DEVIL FISH! [ARTICLE]

OH, THE DEVIL FISH!

That Terrible Sea Monster with Stomach Ont of Place. While at Naples, writes a correspondent, I saw the word “Aquarium” on a building in the middle of a park, and concluded to finish the day there. ,It contained an “octopus,” “cuttle fish,” “squid,” “devil fish,” for he has nearly as many names as he has tentacles. The “varmint” has nothing that can reasonably be called a body, but eight arms or tentacles radiate from a central point. Each one of these arms appears to hava a life and motion of its - own and curls and folds about itself in a manner to make one’s flesh creep. Each arm, too, is furnished with a set of fiat disks or suckers ranging in size from tltat of an ordinary shirt button to that of a 50cent piece. When any one of these disks touches an object the center can be drawn inwardly, forming a vacuum, so that the creature goes about armed with 200 or 000 air pumps. Above the point of intersection of the eight arms is something that nature evidently intended for a head, provided with two fierce-looking eyes and a horny beak, something like that of a bird. Above thy head of the animal is a curiouslooking object, sack-like in form, and apparently attached to the head by a kind of flexible snap. I took it to be some kind of crest or ornament. I was never more mistaken, it being a mostimportant part of the creature’s personality, and nothing more nor less than his stomach. It seems that nature, feeling bound to provide the animal with a stomach, and, having no body to put it into, hung it to liis head in this ridiculous way. As I sat looking nt these curious animals the man in charge let down a crab by a string "into the tank eontaining*the cuttle fish. Instead of throwing out a tentacle and catching tlie crab by the foot, as his relative caught the man in Hugo’s novel, he gathered up, with his eight arms, about ~a hatful of water. He"then gave the water a squeeze with all of his arms at once, and, with the impetus thus given, went for that crab like a flash. He caught it between two of his “shoulders,” so to speak, and thus brought it under his beak. I was curious to see how he would get his dinner into his stomach, which all this time was floating several inches above his head. Well, I hope to sink to the center of the earth this minute if he didn’t haul his stomach down under liis chin (or under where his chin would be if lie had any) and proceed to dissect that crab and put tlie pieces into his stomach, very much as a traveler would pack a lunch basket. The ugly, wriggling, ungainly, misshapen, disgusting monster! I sat and gazed at him for an hour or more, with a kind of horrible fascination. No wonder Victor Hugo called him the “devil fish. ” And that does great injustice to the devil, for we are told by high authority that “the prince of darkness is a gentleman.” Now, whatever else may be said about the “squid,” I. confidently assert that he is no gentleman. No real gentleman, I take it, would wear his stomach, ostentatiously, ou the top of his head, and when he happened to feel hungry haul it dow n under his chin, and pack it with raw crab in full view of the public.