s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

It’s not everybody’s cuppa, but Te Papa is thawing the colossal squid they were given last year (some local trawlers caught it and brought it in — I remember it made the news), and are holding a series of lectures and etc. in conjunction with the dissection. While they’ve got a crack team of specialists assembled, they’re taking advantage of the opportunity to do some work with giant squid and other specimens in the collection as well.

They’ve got a SquidCam set up so you can watch the dissections live. Woo ! And they’ve got a blog so mollusc-o-philes playing at home can keep up with developments and ask questions. Lots of photos of Scientists At Play in their Natural Environment. Scroll to the bottom for the adorable photo of Olaf, from Tonmo* getting silly with one of the Architeuthis tentacles.

*The Octopus News Magazine Online, “Your Octopus, Squid and Cephalopod Information Center.” I note the Cephalopod Science Moderator is Steve O’Shea, the New Zealand squid chaser they did that Discovery Channel special on. Since Steve is also on the Te Papa Squid Team, Tonmo’s getting a lot of traffic lately.

There was some good stuff going on this weekend, in amongst all the rest.

We got to help out a friend up the coast with the loan of one of our studs (we have more than one — that still just weirds me out). She picked Hyouki ! She drove down on Sunday to pick him up and take him back to her place, and we had a nice chat. We had warned her after our attempts to put him with Holly that he was still a mite awkward, but she rang us later in the afternoon to say he did the business just fine (well, with a little help getting lined up anyway). Our little boy’s all grown up *sniff*.

We also got a call from the people up Paekak Hill that we’d visited… last month ? a couple months ago ?… anyway, they’d just had their first cria born to one of their females, and wanted to make sure they were doing all the right stuff & what to look for & etc. It was a good antidote to the misery with Latte to hear from new owners all excited by their very first birth. And it was a girl, too !

And finally, we’ve had a lot of really nice offers of dinners and distractions from friends, and anecdotes from other breeders who’ve been through similar stuff, to help relieve the suckiness. It does help to know you’ve got friends and you’re not alone when you get stuck behind the eight ball like this. Thanks, guys.