The Monster of Twenty Mile Pond Read online

  “Uncle Hughie Tucker is the best one for that part of it. He can give it to you chapter and verse.”

  “He certainly can,” I said. “I’ve had some grand chats with him. Well, that was very interesting, Mr. Squires. I can’t thank you enough for telling me all about Tommy Picco.”

  “Oh, my pleasure,” smiled Uncle Tommy, “no thanks required. But speaking of Hughie Tucker, did I hear him right when he said you have impeccable taste in black rum?”

  “Tommy, what next!” said his sister from the kitchen.

  “You did hear right,” I said, “and by coincidence, I happen to have a bottle right here in my briefcase just to prove my good taste.”

  “That’s better than the Member of the House for this district. He came in looking for our votes one day a couple of years ago and he was sitting where you are now, that very chair, sir, when he opened this box he was carrying around—”

  “Attaché case,” said Melissa from the kitchen.

  “Opened this attaché case, pretending to look for some important documents. My eyesight was still good in those days, and I looked in. You know the only thing he was lugging around in his fancy attaché case? A ham sandwich, sir.”

  The three of us laughed, and I thanked the good Tommy and Melissa Squires again, accepted their open invitation to come back and have a Jiggs’ dinner with them and sample the rum at the same time, and went out to resume my quest.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dr. Max Atwood, professor emeritus of marine biology at Memorial University, was a world-renowned expert on giant squid. I called him, introduced myself, and asked if I could make an appointment to meet with him.

  He responded, “Yes, by all means. But may I inquire what our meeting might be in aid of?”

  “The giant squid has come up in a case I’m handling, and, quite frankly, I’ve become fascinated with the creature and would like to gain some additional knowledge.”

  “Could this lead to my becoming an expert witness in Supreme Court?” asked the professor. “I’ve always wanted to do that. I’ve examined in my lab, by myself or with my predecessor, at least twenty giant squid over the years and I’ve even had a species of squid named after me. Supreme Court would be a good forum for spreading the ink about the giant squid—ink in the newspapers, you understand. Don’t be alarmed: I shan’t use that atrocious pun on the witness stand.”

  “That’s an excellent pun, sir. And we can discuss how to use it to best advantage, because expert testimony before court about the giant squid is a distinct possibility. Which, by the way, is not something I ever expected to say when I first started my law practice.”

  “Alas, I know. It’s no wonder the general public is still abysmally ignorant of the true character of these natural marvels.”

  “True, true. Twenty giant squid, you say, Professor Atwood? That’s a lot of arms, or is it feet?”

  Atwood giggled. “One of my students once said that the coast of Newfoundland is ‘maggoty with the foot-headed friggers.’ I myself wouldn’t go that far, but we do appear to have more than our fair share of the giant squid variety of the head-footed wonders stranded around our coast at fairly regular, but long, intervals.”

  “About how often would that be?”

  “Our esteemed Dr. Fred Aldrich,” said the professor, “former head of this department, reckoned it to be every ninety years or so. He predicted the appearance on our shores of a plethora of giant squid in the late 1960s, some ninety years after the era of sightings that included our famous Tommy Picco’s exploit with his particular devil fish in Conception Bay. I still have an office here at the university, by the way. Come up and we’ll talk all about it and I’ll show you around. We have an octopus specimen here, too.”

  “Are squid and octopi closely related?” I asked.

  “You’re lucky I’m not like my old mentor in New Zealand,” he replied. “When I referred to octopi once, he said that the use of octopi as a plural bespeaks a distressingly vulgar ignorance of the classical languages. Octopodes would be the correct word for more than one octopus, he said. But rather than being pedantic, he suggested that we speak English and use the word octopuses. Octopuses. Good lord, I’d rather say octopi, but he ruined that word for me forever. So octopuses it shall be. Now, are squid and octopuses related, you ask? Very much so. Both of them are saltwater creatures called cephalopods because their feet come out of their heads, and they both have blue blood and three hearts and eight sucker-lined arms. Squids have two tentacles as well, with hooks on them, which they use to reach out and capture prey. There are at least three hundred species of each, which differ from one another in many physical ways and in how and where they live.

  “Octopuses can be more than five metres in size and giant squid can be thirteen metres, or forty-three feet long for females, who are larger than the males, with unconfirmed reports of some measuring up to twenty metres, or sixty feet. Giant squid could very well be as long as a sperm whale.

  “Octopuses can live up to three years, and squid up to five. But, and this is interesting, there can be a convergence between squid and octopuses as well. For example, there’s one highly successful squid called the vampire squid that combines features of octopuses and squids in a unique, one-off, evolutionary formula. Am I going too fast? Of course, on the witness stand, I would be much slower and more deliberate.”

  “No, no,” I said. “This is fascinating. Did I read somewhere that some squid are like chameleons and can change colour?”

  “Yes, in a squid, the skin is covered in pigment-containing cells, chromatophores, which allow the squid to instantly match its colour to its environment. Some octopuses are reported to have this, too.”

  I remembered Lancelot Yeo’s mention of the pilot. “So, if you were looking down at a giant squid, or a large octopus containing those cells, from a helicopter that was flying low over the water, and the squid or octopus vanished suddenly, that ability it has to change its colour could be the cause of its disappearance?”

  “Oh, absolutely. And octopuses and squids can move very fast as well, by jet propulsion, expelling water out of a siphon. Both can swim in every direction, and change course instantly. And, in case you were afraid to ask, yes, there is lovemaking among our head-footed friends, too. Males of both groups fertilize the eggs of the females in various ways. The mind boggles at the permutations and combinations involved with all those tentacles, so I won’t go into detail for fear of arousing jealousy. Ha ha ha.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I went, joining in the hilarity. “I saw a TV documentary a while back about the tremendous intelligence of octopuses. Is that your experience with giant squid, too?”

  “These are great questions. I’m looking forward to Supreme Court. But, Mr. McGill, come up, come up.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In the lab at the university, Professor Atwood showed me specimens and pictures of squid and octopuses. As we moved about, he picked up where we’d left off on the phone the day before.

  “Are they intelligent? Oh yes. Oh yes. Squid and octopuses are the most intelligent of the invertebrates and are an important example of the evolution of intelligence in animals. Research has concluded that octopuses can learn by observing, and possess exceptional ability regarding spatial learning, navigation, and hunting techniques.

  “It has been difficult to study the intelligence of live giant squid in controlled circumstances, but from dead specimens it is clear that the giant squid has a sophisticated nervous system and complex brain. And if the Humboldt squid, the aggressive ‘red devil,’ a smaller but still large cousin of the giant squid, is anything to go by, their hunting forays in packs for schools of fish show remarkable co-operation and communication and indicate they are very likely as intelligent as the octopus.

  “The requirement of giant squid to locate and capture their prey in the vast, deep ocean
and to evade sperm whales, probably their only predator judging by the beaks found inside these whales’ stomachs, has been a driving force behind the development of their advanced intelligence and those eyes. Giant squid, and their cousin, the colossal squid, have the largest eyes of any creature alive. The record for the diameter of a pair of eyes measured to date is twenty-seven centimetres, or nearly a foot wide.”

  “This is intriguing, Professor Atwood. If the giant squid is as intelligent as the octopus, that’s really saying something. Because in that documentary I saw, the octopuses had the ability to use tools. They salvaged coconut shells thrown out by humans, and carried them off and assembled them into a shelter. They even picked up and transported tools, and saved them to use later in the building of complex dens and fortresses. They were able to learn how to escape from convoluted mazes simply by watching another octopus that had been trained to escape. They could even open the screw caps on containers.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the professor. “Yes, yes. Both octopuses and squid have a high level of dexterity, and the same ability necessary for tool use and manipulation that we humans have. The highly sensitive suction cups and prehensile arms of octopuses and squid are just as good at holding and handling objects as the human hand.”

  “Didn’t I read somewhere about an octopus at an aquarium in Germany who could juggle?”

  “Oh yes, that would be dear Otto,” answered Atwood. “There are reports of Otto the octopus juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, and often, he will decide to redecorate his tank, and then he will proceed to rearrange everything in there to suit his taste. Sometimes, for mischief, he deliberately takes aim and throws rocks at the aquarium glass, smashing it.”

  “He actually breaks the glass? That’s a lot of force. Their arms or tentacles must be very strong?”

  “Well, they are all muscle.”

  Now I came to our case: “Would a giant squid be strong enough to throw a man a few feet through the air, ten or twelve feet, for example, do you think?”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in nature,” replied the professor. “They may weigh hundreds of kilograms, but they really are gentle giants. So, unless you’re prepared to volunteer to provoke one into doing it to you in the lab, ha ha. . . . On principle, I’d have to say yes, though—easily strong enough.

  “Now, just to finish with Otto the octopus,” he went on, “he has caused short-circuits for fun in the lighting system in the aquarium by crawling out of his tank and shooting a jet of water at the overhead light.”

  “Amazing. Otto sounds like an exceptional genius among octopuses. Do you think a giant squid could be that smart?”

  “Well, here’s an example of squid intelligence,” he said, “in the form of communication that has been observed to take place between some social species of squid. They use control of their skin colour and their ability to rapidly change that colour, which evolved originally as camouflage, to communicate, apparently meaningfully, with one another in courtship and mating rituals. Members of one species of squid in the Caribbean can even send a particular message, by changing and flashing skin colours and patterns, to a squid on their right, while they send another, different message to a squid on their left.”

  “They must have a pretty sizable brain,” I said. “Is that big bulbous head all brain?”

  “Squid and octopuses have a very high brain-to-body mass ratio, by far the highest of all invertebrates. And our giant squid possesses huge nerve cells that are the largest found in any animal alive, and which control escape and attack behaviours. A single nerve cell can be thirty centimetres long.

  “The very instant the squid’s brain says ‘Escape!’ or ‘Attack!’ she’s off. There is absolutely no delay in transmitting the ‘go’ message between synapses as there is in other animals; for instance, something slow, say, like a cheetah. Ha ha. So, all considered, whether a giant squid can be as smart as Otto the octopus is still a challenging question, but I would say they are certainly in the same ballpark of intelligence.”

  “When I was googling the giant squid a while ago,” I said, “I came across a philosopher in the UK who said he saw clear evidence in a video of a giant squid that it demonstrated true feelings, which others, I think, have taken as an indication that it possessed consciousness.”

  “Yes, that would be the philosopher, Professor David Cockburn, at the University of Wales, where he lectures on the philosophy of mind. He saw a video of a giant squid that must have thought it was under attack by the photographer with the video camera, and the squid showed unmistakable signs of being afraid. It cringed and trembled and winced. What was amazing about it to Cockburn was that you could clearly see in the reaction of the squid, so different in appearance from a human being, the unambiguous emotion of fear which one human being would readily recognize in another. Clearly, the giant squid possessed a high level of consciousness.”

  “It would be interesting to capture one alive and do some brain scans to see what is going on in there.”

  “Let me know when you catch one alive and kicking,” he said. “So far, regrettably, any giant squid captured alive has either died in the process or very soon afterwards.”

  I came to the crux of my inquiry: “Do any octopuses or squid live in lakes or rivers?”

  “Some anecdotes have come to us of octopuses and squid having been seen in bodies or streams of fresh water. There are no confirmed cases, though. I suppose it’s not absolutely impossible, but nothing has been proved, and I would have to judge it as highly improbable. It’s all a matter of osmosis. They never developed a sodium pump that would help them cope with the demands of osmosis in fresh water. I would have to conclude, really, that there’s no way a giant squid or octopus could survive in fresh water at all, and certainly not for a long period of time.”

  “What about salmon, though, or sea trout, or eels, Dr. Atwood? Salmon are born and develop in fresh water, then migrate downstream to spend their adult lives in salt water, and end up coming back to fresh water to spawn.”

  “Yes, to spawn and to die, usually. The attempt to change back to fresh water and the trauma of it seems to be what kills them. Salmon and the others have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to make those adaptations to fresh water, and to brackish water at the mouth of the stream, and then salt water, and back to brackish and fresh again. But no species of squid or octopus is reported to have evolved in that way.”

  “What about a sudden, spontaneous mutation,” I offered, “that allowed a giant squid or octopus to survive if it happened to blunder into a river or lake?”

  Professor Atwood smiled indulgently. “A glance at some of the ocean species and their behaviours would convince the most skeptical marine biologist that nothing seems impossible out there in the briny deep, in evolutionary terms. For instance, I mentioned the vampire squid, which combines features of octopuses and squids in a unique evolutionary formula that has survived for millions of years. It lives hundreds of metres down and feeds exclusively on the decaying dead descending through the water. It occupies a classification category all of its own, the only species in its order, Vampyroteuthis infernalis. The ‘squid from hell.’

  “But I would have to say that the possible mutation you just described would be an extremely naive view of the way evolutionary change by way of genetic mutations works. There is no way that such a non-incremental, sudden mutation could have taken place to develop sophisticated survival machinery back and forth between salt and fresh water, or, better said, the odds are astronomically against it.”

  “But, Dr. Atwood, what if I were to tell you that over a hundred years ago, young Tommy Picco allowed two squid-like creatures to escape into Windsor Lake and that they were never seen again, even floating dead on the water? And that there have been reports of some sort of large creature in the lake ever since.”

  “Mr. McGill, I li
ve on St. Thomas Line, not far from there, and I recall reading in a history of the area about a battle royal that took place around the time of Tommy Picco between residents there and St. John’s city officials over making the lake the main water supply for the city. Just like the battle of Foxtrap, when residents protested the railway going through.

  “People in the vicinity of Twenty Mile Pond were outraged that they wouldn’t be able to fish there anymore, or hunt or snare rabbits, or boat there, or build cabins, or have skating parties, or do anything else in or around the lake for recreation, as they had been doing for generations. I’m not surprised that scary stories were invented by both sides to either drive the water-supply people away and make them drop the project, on the one hand, or to stop the livyers there from continuing their previous activities on the lake, on the other.”

  I decided to try out my experience on him. “Okay, then, but don’t think me mad altogether when I tell you that over twenty years ago I saw from Portugal Cove Road, cold sober late one summer afternoon, an osprey stop suddenly above the water in its dive and fly off again fast, and, at the same instant, a thick tentacle emerge from Windsor Lake and snatch a seagull right out of the air.”

  “I don’t think you mad, my good man,” said Atwood. “Not in the least. I’m a bit of a photography buff and a film freak, and I have often discussed with a friend from Quebec, who is a filmmaker, the pictures and film we’ve taken here in Newfoundland. We both agreed that on some days there is nothing in the world as extraordinary as the air and the light in this province for filming. I’m guessing now, but I’d say that on the day in question the sky was cloudless, the sun you were looking into was low and bright, blinding even, and the wind was from a northerly direction, making the air as clear as crystal.”

  “Very much like that, Professor, yes.”

  “I imagined as much, and I say that because I was filming from a longliner in Bonavista Bay on a day like that, trying to confirm reported sightings of a giant squid. All of a sudden I saw a killer whale, an orca, rise right out of the water for a split second, seize a seal in its mouth from the surface, and instantly disappear again.