Shopping with Spike - STEVEN R. TABOR

Shopping with Spike

How can you tell if someone is intelligent?

This has been a challenging year for Octopi. "The Octopus Teacher" film came out on Netflix, and all of a sudden, everybody discovered that Octopi are intelligent, sentient beings, and that they make fine house pets. Prior to this, people generally gave Octopi a wide berth---after all, the expression: "to wrap your tentacles around someone" is hardly a term of affection.

Take for example, the case of my good friend, Spike. Spike was enjoying a swim in the warm, tropical waters. He was just minding his own business, when out of nowhere appears a redheaded woman. She plucks him out of the water, plops him into her car, and takes him home with her. For weeks thereafter, the redheaded woman and her friends bombard poor Spike with questions like: "Hey, what's it like to be an octopus?", and "Hey, bet it's hard to shop for clothes with all those tentacles?". After months of such inane conversation, Spike begain to wonder if, indeed, human beings should be classified as "intelligent beings".

Then one day, the redheaded woman comes into Spike's room and asks him: "Shall we go for a road trip today? Would you like to join me for an afternoon of retail therapy?". Spike had no idea what retail therapy was, but since Octopi are naturally curious, he nodded affirmatively and off they went to the local Mall.

Spike thoroughly enjoyed his day of retail therapy. He shopped till he nearly dropped, and he even managed to visit some of his distant relatives at the local aquarium. Just like any other fish out of the water, Spike carefully documented his retail therapy trip with a series of selfies. And rather than post those directly to the messy waters of social media, he decided to share those selfies with the viewers of this photo series.

If you'd like to see the full series, download the PDF Photobook here.