Opinions
Won’t Somebody Please Think of the North American Tree Octopuses?
By Maureen McCurdle
Maureen McCurdle is a lecturer and research fellow at Pepperdine University and the founder of the Political Action Committee Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future.
It would be wrong to ignore the fact that we work in a dying field while living in a dying world. This op-ed––based on research conducted in the temperate rainforests of North America’s Olympic Peninsula––examines the implications of ecological destruction in the habitat of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Drawing on the work of Gordon V. Plumpton, we trace the changes in ecosystem and biodiversity within the coniferous rainforests, and speculate as to the likelihood of the species’ continued survival now that climate change has begun exacting its toll. Finally, we correct misperceptions and name the nefarious actors responsible.
Before we dive into the future of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus, it is essential to contextualize the animal’s historical significance insomuch as it reveals biases and hypocrisies which afflict the broader zoological community to this day. The animal has never been granted the respect so freely given to cephalopods of no greater biological sophistication, even after the recent and tragic extinctions of the Douglas Octopus and Red-Ringed Madrona Sucker. It has the largest brain-to-body ration of any mollusk, and is one of very few species observed practicing religious rituals in the wild. Swinging between branches through tentaculation, foraging for frogs and bird eggs, the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus astounds!
What a fascinating animal, you are surely thinking. What a majestic creature, what a bumbling moron it takes to remain unmoved in the face of such wonder. For years, we have taken up Plumpton’s project, taken up his mantle. We have shared late dinners and early breakfasts. We have exchanged secrets and convivial advice. We have moved into his former home, slept in his former bed, hung stockings at Christmastime on the mantle which was once only his.
For years, our calls to protect these unique animals have been silenced. Perhaps because we have not always used the most temperate language in responding to the vicious attempts to discredit the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus on the World Wildlife Fund’s online forum, and the Animal Welfare Institute Facebook page, and in the comment sections to various subreddits and Tumblr blogs. Perhaps because our field has been infiltrated by rogue actors acting on behalf of Koch Industries. Meanwhile, two of the more recent additions to the Supreme Court of the United States (Federalist Society members, it must be said) have hinted that The Endangered Species Act exceeds Congress’ constitutional power under the commerce clause. It is only a matter of time until the dark money unleashed by Citizens United (a lawsuit funded in large part by the Federalist Society, it must be said) has its way with us, now that it has plundered campaign finance, organized labor, and the system by which judges are elected. Between the Federalist Society’s network of conservative zealots which actively recruit across more than 200 college campuses and Chock_Full_of_Ham’s threats to share comprising photos of my beloved mentor with the National Inquirer––published by none other than American Media CEO David Pecker, longtime friend of Donald Trump––we have no choice but to plead with you, the American people, directly.
Only 44 Pacific Northwest Tree Octopuses have been identified in the wild since Plumpton’s 1976 discovery of the animal on his way home from an oceanic cruise. Stumbling about during a multiple drug toxicity episode involving novel psychoactive substances which impaired his sense of direction, Plumpton managed to wander deep into the Olympic National Forest. Tripping over a tree root which sent the contents of his suitcase soaring, Plumpton spotted the creature napping upon a swaying branch. As the story goes, Plumpton was in such a rush to return to the lab that he went months without underwear and socks, having neglected to collect the items ejected during the serendipitous moment. I had long sought to expand Plumpton’s wardrobe, but, as was invariably the case during our years together, he neglected my desires in pursuit of a breakthrough for which he would be remembered long after death.
No fewer than 32 Pacific Northwest Tree Octopuses have been captured by the camera subsequently installed at this very spot, a camera which rivals only the Hubble telescope in the richness of discovery made thanks to its lens. In tandem, of course, with the 40 years of dedicated work which defined my mentor’s criminally-overlooked career. Even so, some have been so irresponsible as to attack his credibility by suggesting the first Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus was, in fact, a normal octopus which had merely managed to stow away in his luggage. That every subsequent recording of a Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus has been either a sighting of this same octopus or a hoax intended to further Plumpton’s controversial career.
While it is true that there have been no recorded sightings of the creature since Plumpton kicked the bucket––by kicking that large bucket of wood chips on the outermost edge of the yard out of misplaced frustration at yet another rejection from an academic press for his latest manuscript and accidentally slipped into that ravine––the other twelve specimens found within this same forest by independent hikers with absolutely no connection to Plumpton, myself, or the organization for whom I speak, today, disqualify completely the claims of these most dishonest stakeholders. In tandem with the disinformation campaign of reddit user Chock_Full_Of_Ham––the protégé of Jacob Wohl, the protégé of convicted felon James O’Keefe––as well as the assorted crimes and moral violations perpetrated by this out-of-control teen, the conspiracy introduces itself.
As if the decimation of habitat by logging and urban encroachment weren’t sufficient in limiting the number of trees suitable for residence, with each new gated community come dozens of house cats, the natural predator of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. The outlook of the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus is grim, folks, because the outlook of every species on this God-forsaken planet is grim. The Pacific Northwest is projected to soon mimic the climate of the 20th century American Midwest, with approximately 140,000 coastal acres expected to be underwater by the end of the century. Although they flourish in the uppermost expanse of tree limbs––and although they remain an almost unimaginably self -sufficient animal––the tiny population and range of possible outcomes for their coniferous forest refuge means that, without our intervention, the North American Tree Octopus faces annihilation.
It’s likely you’ve heard all about myself and my organization from a corporate media only too willing to enact the agenda of our oligarchic overlords. It’s time Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future set the record straight. In mid-July 2018 I was invited to present a paper at a conference organized by an economics professor who we know now was hired for work at the Mercatus Center. The Mercatus Center, of course, we now know to be a secretly-Koch-funded think tank on the campus of George Mason University, a place at which vile men and women continually covertly contrive to produce manipulated studies which might be provided to compromised congressional operatives, perpetuating power through monopoly consolidation and the regular hiring of former members of the executive branch for their leverage with former colleagues who remain in public office. The New York Times elucidated this depraved relationship a few years ago, in fact. It’s a form of corruption made illegal in most countries, those less exceptional than our own.
And so, had I known then what I do now, I might have been prepared for my arrival to D.C. The Kochs and the Federalist Society have been controlling faculty appointments in George Mason’s Economics Department for 28 years, as it turns out, brainwashing malleable teens into pursuing positions of influence where they might continue plundering the wealth of the credit-card-indebted many for the already-stuffed-wallets of the few. Google it. There’s no excuse for ignorance in this day and age. As was revealed from the Times investigation, only one third of the $150 million in total donations made by the Kochs to some 300 schools over the past few decades went to George Mason, suggesting that academia has been fully infiltrated by agents of destruction, suggesting that academia might be beyond salvation. And so it was only then, months after the fact, that we realized the invitation had been a ruse from the beginning. That we at Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future couldn’t possibly blame me for the arrest after all. That I had been followed from the tarmac, the gate, the luggage carousel.
So, it’s the summer following my seventh year of employment and the university puts me up in a Ramada. What a sad place. The carpets are stained with blackened gum, the walls are discolored and peeling, and the elevator shakes back and forth while in motion. Everything smells of bleach and decay. I walk to the Shell across the street and buy a couple forties for later in the evening, as custom dictates. I walk to campus, shake hands, open with a bit about Monopoly being just about the least fun board game ever invented, a bit about monopoly consolidation in every facet and industry of American life being just about the least discussed ill tormenting our society.
Seven people attend and, ten minutes into the presentation (and so ten minutes late), a late-arriving young woman trips over my messenger bag while walking to a seat in the dark, spilling upon the floor the contents of my backpack. The forties are flipping and flopping and flying all about on the tile, not unlike that classic childhood game spin the bottle. A scramble to end the commotion, but not before an undergraduate (a teen crisis actress hired by Koch Industries we have no choice but to believe) sitting in the front row dives to the floor and makes off with a bottle. She’s just sprinting down the hall, chugging the forty all the while. In no time at all, she’s passed out on the floor––blackout drunk––and I’m accused of providing alcohol to a minor and arrested by a member of campus security, threatened with deportation––despite being from Jersey––and eventually released on outrageously high bail. We know the entire episode made plenty of headlines way back when. Don’t believe everything you see on Nancy Grace. That woman has issues.
I’m flying back to L.A. and preparing for a suspension if not outright dismissal when I remember the odd interaction at Dulles ticketing on the first leg of the trip. Too embarrassed by the spectacle to fully reflect at that time, I then consider the peculiarity of the irregularities with the boarding pass, specifically the confirmation number of this boarding pass. Sandy, the departmental administrative assistant (working on behalf of our department head, no doubt) had been handling the logistics of our travel given that Pepperdine was paying for the trip, and yet the info sent to our email address was woefully inadequate from the start. Not only had she––the departmental administrative assistant, that is––sent us a blurry pdf picture of said ticket rather than provided the link to the ticket itself, but this scanned image was crooked, cutting off a crucial, final letter and/or digit.
After a song and dance, I was finally able to proceed to security, but the difficulties had been enough to attract attention from fellow travelers, many of whom began smirking and gawking at the interaction with the United representative once it became clear that I was running through every possible boarding pass character permutation as a consequence of the missing last letter and/or digit. We at Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future are resolute in believing that the intent was to publicly embarrass, and we will neither forget nor forgive Sandy for her betrayal. There is no question in our mind that Sandy has been complicit for some time now, and that for all the adorable photos of grandchildren on her desk, and for all the scrumptious baked goods she leaves in the lounge at the beginning of every month, she ought be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
So, anyway, I’m back in California the next day, and our department chair is irrate. She’s flinging around accusations of unprofessionalism and incompetence when, suddenly, she’s repeating the most common of the insults sent in our direction––verbatim––from the darkest corners of the internet responsible for manufacturing this filth.
We ask the right question and she admits that reddit user Chock_Full_of_Ham has sought to exploit the chaos by emailing her an elaborate list of allegations equally disgusting and untrue, crowdfunded from amongst the foul life forms who comprise the virtual kingdom from which he reigns supreme: r/TheRedPill. She seems unconvinced, but only because she doesn’t know the internet like we do. She doesn’t know Chock_Full_of_Ham like every single one of us at Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future do. Chock_Full_of_Ham––the creator or moderator of dozens of subreddits of extreme content from graphic violence directed at women to men’s rights activism to child pornography––is a troll. Only a seventeen-year-old boy living in his parents’ basement living off his parents’ income, trained during a summer camp joint venture between convicted criminal James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas and criminally un-convicted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA––yet another amateurish project founded by a disreputable high school senior and funded by dark money and racial resentment––would have the time and hormonal rage to stalk us as he does. But which seventeen-year-old boy living in his parents’ basement living off his parents’ income, trained during a summer camp joint venture between convicted criminal James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas and criminally un-convicted Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA? That’s the question. There are just so many such teens, these days. And the FBI and NSA have been equally unhelpful in responding to our entreaties.
We expected no help from a federal government too busy making deals with multinational corporate merchants of death to drill for fossil fuels in national parks, but we need your help, fellow Americans. Our institutions are crumbling and our leaders are complicit in a neoliberal dystopia of obscene proportions as we destroy the only world we have ever known simply because we cannot be bothered to stop selling and buying and consuming. If not for my or our sake, please think of the North American Tree Octopuses, fellow Americans. We use this formulation––this cliché––not as our enemies do in conducting emotional blackmail by appealing to an undeserved moral authority. We use it in that hope that, for once, we think not only of the children, but, also––at least this one time––of the North American Tree Octopuses.
In any case, my story is near its end. I explain to my department head that Chock_Full_Of_Ham––and the troll farm of teens he commands with funding provided by Turning Point USA, a revelatory story broken by The Washington Post only a few months ago––has been harassing me for years, conducting denial of service attack after DoS attack. I explain how I cannot even watch Netflix before bed, anymore. Comcast has answered the last phone call by tersely noting that they have spent more money paying technicians to clean up my service month after month than I pay in internet, and so are now refusing to adhere to the terms of our contract. It should be said Comcast has long funded many of the same conservative organizations and anti-consumer initiatives as the Kochs and so it makes only too much sense that they too would collaborate in assassinating my character––and by extension the character of our entire organization––during the most fragile time in the Pacific Northwest tree Octopuses’s existence. Coincidence? We think not.
I tell our department head all this, and she says I’m paranoid. She says every single one of us at Humans for a Safer North American Tree Octopus Future has invented a conspiracy theory because I’m desperate to retain my job in advance of the upcoming university Misconduct Investigation Review. Says she knows all about the drinking problem. I tell her we’ve known all about her drinking problem ever since her canoodling escapade with Josh in the supply closet during the Daiquiri Jamboree Faculty Holiday Party three years back, and that conspiracies are all around us. Not just the Obama Administration’s firing of the inspector general tasked with investigating then Sacramento Mayor––and former NBA star and current friend of Barack himself––Kevin Johnson’s embezzling of federal funds and serial sexual predation of the young girls attending school in his St. HOPE charter organization, but the delegitimization of recognizing any and all North American Tree Octopuses as endangered creatures in need of federal support, as well as the increasing militarization of local police departments at a time in which they have been infiltrated by white nationalists and insulated from regulatory oversight through a combination of the gutting of the Department of Justice, careerist district attorneys, and everyday structural, societal racism.
She says I’m suspended pending a formal investigation and I say we’re writing all about her incompetence in this very op-ed, then in the earliest of editorial stages here at the Washington Post. She says I’m on thin ice and I say we’re on the thickest ice there ever was or is or will be. Everything is Gamergate, now. This is what the older generations refuse to understand. The culture war will never be the same.
She says fine, our department head does, and so did I, then, and so do we, now. Democracy dies in darkness says the newspaper you hold in your very hands, owned and operated by the richest man in human history.
Samuel Rafael Barber is 0.00000001272566% of the population and the author of the chapbook Thousands of Shredded Scraps of Paper Located across Five Landfills, That if Pieced Together Form a Message (The Cupboard, 2019). He is a PhD candidate at the University of Denver and his fiction has appeared in DIAGRAM, Passages North, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, The Rupture, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. According to life expectancy tables, he will live another 53.2 years.