The Country Mice

Following our morning in Gukje market, where we saw everything from sparkling neckties to fine leather shoes to rubber chickens and knock-off designer eyeglasses, we followed our noses to the most lively portion of our travels, the Jagalchi fish market.

When I wander through these little alleys stacked to their tented rafters with every piscine offering available to humankind, I’ve got to assume that not much has changed over the centuries. These tightly packed stalls are just a few metres back from the water’s edge, a coastline that is now banked with concrete and peppered with ocean-going sea liners, but the shop keepers may as well have been selling their wares on the same wooden crates 100 years ago. The single light bulb illuminating the stall could easily have been an oil lantern.

And replace the plastic with woven bamboo, as many still do, and there you go — living history!

My little troupe found the sights and smells interesting and a suitable replacement for the aquarium field trip for which they’d been angling.

Most of the shopkeepers were tiny, tho not always elderly, women, at work tying, scraping, packaging and sorting. I would guess the men were out arranging the catch.

Most of the food for sale was freshly caught, although one entire series of alleys was devoted to dried seaweed in various forms, nori and kombu being the most recognizable, and another block was all about desiccation — octopi, cuttlefish, squid, wee fish so tiny the grains of salt on them were as big as their eyes, and great giant whacks of something that lives in the corner of my bad dreams.

And for the most part even a veg-head like me would know how to prepare them for eating.

But then there are some things which defy description — I don’t know what these things are and I’m not even able to imagine how I’d swallow them if they were presented to me on a plate.

I told Homeboy what I thought they felt like, after giving one a poke.

“Oh?” he inquired archly, all his pre-adolescent ‘tude coming to the fore. “And how would you know?”

Because I have a son, I replied.

Howls of laughter all ’round.

Shortly before leaving Vancouver I read a story about an 80-year-old lobster that had been caught in Atlantic Canada. Its captors had decided its venerable age had earned it a quiet retirement so they advertised and found it a home in a Chicago aquarium.

I doubt this giant specimen will enchant its owners similarly.

I have an abiding affection for a few odd creatures and the octopus is one.

Its ability to camouflage, the ultimate sacrifice made by the female for her young, the ooey-gooey-ness of its eight-limbed body — all tickles my sense of the bizarre.

Observe the many octopi in this large plastic tub.

See the lid?

See the small opening left between the lid and the tub? You’re right, you can’t see it because it’s too small.

But someone else can see the crack.

The octopus in this red plastic tub was in the large tub a shutter-snap ago, until one long exploratory tentacle found a minute space between the lid and the tub’s edge. Then, like an entire tube of toothpaste being squeezed through the nozzle of some Crazy Glue, the patient and persistent octopus wrangled himself into a red basin of freedom.

A few exploratory reaches more, however, and it was gonna

head out on the highway,
looking’ for adventure
and whatever comes my way…
’cause he was born to be wild…

We all stood there, somewhat agog, wondering how far the octo-thoner would get before his recapture. And more confusing yet, should we encourage the escapee? Cheer on the convict? Aid and abet these limbs on the lam?

Or should we protect the prisoner and get him off the road before a tragic encounter with a bicycle tire?

I will say, if you’ve only thought an octopus glided serenely and peacefully through the cool brine of the world’s oceans, you are one mistaken landlubber, my friend. These guys know how to suck it up and move on down.

And now the story must end.

The little lady who guarded the tubs with an amused smile looked even more entertained at our useless selves just standing there and indicated that I should pick it up.

Sure, hon. Not a problem. I’ve handled worse. Right.

I bent down, right hand out, got my fingers interlaced with the tentacles and lifted. Actually, no I did not. I did not lift up Mr. Octo because he was firmly anchored to terra firma. I pulled up again, uh, nope, he was not going anywhere. That little sucker had all his little suckers working firmly in his favour and most clearly was not coming with me.

The little lady took pity on me and indicated I should surprise Mr. Eight-Legs with a swift tug when he wasn’t expecting it.

I grasped again and then gave a swift pull. Success! He was mine!

I tossed him back in the tub as another little lady handed me a bucket to de-slime my hand.

Arm- wrestling with an octopus. How I spent my summer vacation.