Army's Concern

Army Manta, chairman of the Octopus Board of Endangered species,
or OBOES, floated down to the Atlantic sea floor’s coral rings
where the other octopus board members had gathered.

The Board was meeting, this time, in a relatively shallow section
of water about ten miles south of Sugarloaf Key and within
a squid’s throw of Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park.

(Access to land was vital to the octopi, now the dominant species
on Earth, and they used Keys’ pelicans to receive and deliver messages.)

Army waved two tentacles in the blurry undersea medium,
grabbed columns of coral with two other, dug three
into the loose seabed sand and let one drift freely
in the persistent Gulf Stream current.

Army eyed the gathered members sitting like patient octopi
in the newly constructed coral arena, built by the way,
by Octopi United Coral Housing, or OUCH.
Army addressed the members:

Well, it’s a great pleasure to see so many familiar faces
here at this meeting of OBOES--I see some unfamiliar faces too,
and so I bid welcome to all you new members.

Army felt self-conscious about his one dangling tentacle,
so he wrapped it around an outcrop of coral and continued:

I am here today to address you on the species homo sapiens,
or human beings, as they are know colloquially.
As many of you no doubt remember from the last meeting,
I expressed a concern about the human’s diminishing population and,
as a result, I directed our scientists at the Octopus Institute of Land Studies,
or OILS, to conduct a study on the rate of their population decline.
I am happy to report that, with the cooperation of varied land species,
such as the Calamine Raccoon and the Loggerhead Lynx,
the study is underway--empirical results should be forthcoming.

As is common with the Gulf Steam, the current increased suddenly,
and all the assembled octopi leaned to one side in unison as if they
were performing as an Olympic synchronized swim team.
Army recovered from his lean, waved a tentacle and went on:

It is well worth while to save the humans from extinction,
because they contributed greatly to the history of our planet.
They built great land structures and, long ago, they even ventured
off the planet and landed their machines and themselves on the moon.
It is true they are the only known species to have made war upon themselves,
yet they once connected the entire land world with something called Internet.

40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
May 19, 2013