TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Baird:
On our way home from school, just before we got to our place, on the side west side of the dock there was the boom sticks and in the center, all down in the muck because the tide was out, there looked like a - something strange, the colour of a pile of sawdust, about that same colour. And, we couldn't figure out what it was, so, one of us happened to have a sling shot and the other guy had a couple of rocks and just got an angle over the head of this creature and all the arms shot out, but there was only six arms, not eight. Anyway, we dashed down and got the rowboat and some tools, pipe pole, (?), axes, and whatever else we could get our hands on, and brought it in. Measured 8'4" across, across the body, one side 8'4". But there was two legs - two arms - missing, and through inquiries we found out that one of the sawmills three miles down the inlet, Barnet sawmills, this chap had fallen off the dock and this octopus grabbed him, he happened to have had a knife in his belt and cut off two arms to get free. It was several weeks later that this octopus, the one that we captured out here on the west side of the old Moody dock.

Interviewer:
Was it still alive?

Mr. Baird:
When we got to it? Oh sure. Yeah. It was afterwards we had the whole town coming down and charged a dime per person to come and see it - big money in those days. And the whole town came down to see it and some character happened to grab one of the arms backwards, and it had suction cups along the tentacle, along one of the arms, and stuck himself right into his palm of his hand and had an awful time getting it off. Yeah, terrific vacuum. So eventually, just down below, on this side of Queen Street, where the old dock used to be there used to be a Japanese colony and they paid us five bucks and bought it as a Japanese delicacy.