Waiting patiently as my order was being prepared I kept wondering: "Why are these people burning rubber?" You would not know what rubber felt like in your mouth until you ate the badly cooked egg-white-like chewy, bumpy tasteless thing the chef called octopus. I was told later that I should have visited one of the numerous Greek restaurants in the city as they cook the best octopus. But the damage had been done, and I swore to myself never to eat the creature again. Once back home, I took time to study pictures of this slimy animal and wondered what had gone into my head that I should even think of eating the strange looking 'fish'.
The memory of that summer day in Barcelona, came back during the just-ended World Cup. The trigger: that creature called the octopus. This time around it was the one given the name Paul by its keepers in Berlin, Germany. This boneless soothsaying creature correctly predicted the winning team in eight games. The octopus has eight tentacles! The spongy necromancer became a worldwide celebrity for precisely predicting the winner in all seven games played by Germany and the final between Spain and the Netherlands. The owners say they did not play the ouija (the talking board), or the tarot or even throw the dice before consulting the octopus. They say they simply placed two clear boxes in his tank, each containing a mussel snack and the flag of teams slated to face off. The two-and-half year old would simply pick the winning team.
