Camping Amongst the Tentacles

I stared in horror at the scarred body of my Tasmanian correspondent.  Huge circular welts appeared on every exposed surface.

"You look like you've been beaten up by a dalek," I told her.

"How the hell do you know?" she responded.

I reminded her that my Belarusian tech support had installed video conferencing facilities in every room of her house and hadn't told either of us how to turn them off.  She nodded understanding and reached for some clothes while kicking something a little incriminating under the bed.

In actual fact she hadn't been beaten up by a dalek.  She had had a rather bruising encounter with a somewhat curious cephalopod.  This isn't the first time that news has come of unexpected octopus attacks in Tasmania.  Almost nobody lives on the coast anymore for fear of tentacles sweeping in from the sea to snatch unwary citizens to a watery doom.  My correspondent is possibly the first person to encounter one while camping however.

I had to admit to being a little confused.  Did she pitch her tent on it?  Did she open a water bottle and there it was?  Did she go camping at Sea World?  No, she went camping by the seaside.  I know that sounds like the plotline for an Enid Blyton story but I'm pretty sure dear Enid didn't have any stories that involved plucky young British kids being swept to a watery grave by monsters from the deep.  Although I would read such a story in a heartbeat if it existed.

The octopus, it transpires, probably wasn't trying to kill her.  It was just a little curious about the presence of a land based mammal so close to a vast expanse of salty wet stuff and had sent a tentacle or two on a fact finding mission.  My correspondent was so close to the water in a desperate attempt to evade the marauding possums that had laid waste to her campsite.  Does she know how to show her children a good time or what?  Apparently all three of them wound up cringing in a single tent while the possums trashed everything else and let forth victory bellows that startled every octopus for miles around.

She wasn't the only one either.  Apparently this location wedged between feral possums and terminally curious octopi is considered a prime camping spot, another reason why the Tasmanian population is low.  Others also reported tentacular encounters over the course of the weekend.  One man in particular was felt up by an octopus as he sat on an ocean convenient rock.

I suddenly got suspicious.

"He's the one who had the octopus encounter isn't he?"  I demanded.

"Yes," muttered my correspondent shamefaced.

"You weren't attacked by an octopus at all were you?"

"No.  But the possum story is entirely true."

"Well, that's all right.  It's still a good story and its not as if either of us is in line for a Pullitzer."

She heaved a sigh of relief and was about to sign off when something else struck me.

"Wait a minute, what were all those markings about then?"

"Mind your own business," she suggested.

I decided that was probably the safest course to follow.