09-Twelve Mile Limit Read Free

octopus’s special pigment cells, or chromatophores, strobe red, it’s angry. When they strobe white, the octopus is afraid.
    I don’t happen to believe octopi are motivated by emotion or react to emotion—people are much too quick to assign human qualities to animals—but, still, they are fascinating creatures.
    Because octopi are smart and predatory, I keep them one or two to a tank and make certain the tanks are heavily lidded.
    Even so, I’d now lost one small long-armed octopus and two football-sized Atlantic octopi without explanation. Like the crabs, and like Janet Mueller, the octopi simply seemed to vanish.
    Now, out of frustration, I was checking the water in each and every one of my aquaria to make certain conditions were as close to ideal as I could make them before I retackled the mystery of my disappearing lab animals. Salinity had checked out at twenty-four parts per thousand, which was exactly the same as the salinity of the bay in which I’d collected the octopi, and, now, the flask in my hand began to turn a pale shade of rose, meaning there was sufficient oxygen as well.
    I listened to Ransom and Tomlinson continue to bicker as I crossed the room to the sink. As I did, I noted that I was being tracked by a solitary, golden eye: The largest of the eight remaining octopi in the tanks along the wall was watching me from beneath a rock ledge.
    It recognized me, I had no doubt of that. I saw an extended tentacle throb gray, pink, and brown as I passed, reacting, perhaps, to hunger stimuli. I was the man who brought it two fiddler crabs, each and every evening.
    That was when, through the south window, I noticed Jeth Nicholes, a fishing guide and Janet’s on-again, off-again lover, running along the mangrove path toward the wooden walkway that leads to my house. Panic has an odor, a tenor, and a visual quality that imprints on spinal neurons micro-moments before recognition touches the brain.
    Jeth was in a panic.
    I heard Ransom say to Tomlinson, “Okay, Mr. Vegetarian, Mr. Love and Harmony who say that we shouldn’t kill no living creatures. Talk to me about the other night. The two of us out there on the deck of that sleepy white sailboat of yours smokin’ that ganja. You not the man I saw jump up and squash them palmetto bugs? Man, I seen that with my own two eyes.”
    I was moving faster now, toward the door to see what was the matter with Jeth, and her words touched my ears as, Mon, I seen daht wi’ me oon two eyes. A pretty accent that conjured up images of coconut palms, coral islands.
    Heard her add, “What you tellin’ me is, an animal got to be big before it important enough not to kill. Or it got to be cute, like a stuffed animal. Stomp, stomp, stomp! Man, I seen you kill them palmetto bugs. I seen you slap plenty of mosquitoes out there on that boat of yours, too, not to mention a couple bushels of no-see-ums.”
    I heard Tomlinson answer, “Killing insects, sure, I get some whiskey in me, something crawls up my leg, I’m gonna smack it before I take time to think. But you miss the point, lovely lady. I’ve killed plenty of palmetto bugs. But I wouldn’t kill Florida’s last palmetto bug,” as I opened the lab’s door and saw Jeth sprinting down the walkway. I could feel his weight through the vibrating wood as he ran, could see the mottled color of his face—another kind of color change that illustrated emotion.
    He was frightened all right.
    When he saw me, he yelled, “Doc, we’ve been trying to call! You got your damn phone off the hook again, don’t you?”
    Anger is a common derivative of fear.
    I sensed Tomlinson move behind me in the doorway as Jeth, standing still now, yelled, “We’ve got to get all the boats we can down there! The whole marina, we’re organizing, we’re going to run down and join the search. But we need to hurry, damn it!”
    I had no idea what he was talking about, of course, but, behind me, Tomlinson whispered, “Janet,” his elevated powers of observation making the quick