A strange embrace

摘要

I spent the winter of 2012 to 2013 in Boston, visiting the New England Aquarium nearly every weekend with my 2-year-old son. On each trip we would see the aquarium's octopus, sometimes milky white, sometimes brilliant red, sometimes scarcely visible within its rocky lair. Within seconds, my son would invariably tug at my arm, dragging me on to other animals - the electric eel, the seadragons - or perhaps simply to run the halls. What I didn't know was that author Sy Montgomery spent much of that winter, and many other seasons, on the opposite side of the octopus display. Over the course of several years, she developed close relationships with a series of giant Pacific octopuses and their handlers.