Ringo Starr and the Real Story About Octopus Gardens by Karla Stover

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A TIME LINE:

1. On 22 August 1968, Ringo Starr temporarily walked out of sessions for the White Album after becoming disenchanted with the increasing tensions within the group.

2. Actor Peter Sellers owned a yacht named Amelfis. (The name comes from he word, Amelfi and means, you like to make your own decisions and to be the master of your domain.)

3. At that time, the Amelfis was moored in a bat at Sardinia, and Sellers loaned it to Starr and his family.



4. The Starrs went out on it for a day and the captain told Ringo how though octopuses hang out in their caves, they have been known to go around the seabed finding shiny stones, tin cans, and bottles to put in front of their cave, a bit like creating a garden.

5. A guitar and "a couple of tokes later," Ringo had a song.,

George Harrison provided uncredited assistance in developing the song's chord changes. (Both Harrison and Starr often felt their musical accomplished were dismissed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon.) In the documentary, Let It Be, he can be seen helping Starr work out the song on piano. John Lennon later joined in on the drums.

But, do octopuses actually make gardens?

 According to John Forsythe, a marine biologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, "Octopuses like to hide in a den -- any crevice or hole that is protected. Often they conceal the opening to that den by piling up rocks, broken shells, broken glass, bottle caps, lost wedding rings, anything they can find or sucker. That pile is called an octopus midden -- or garden, if you prefer."

 We who live on Puget Sound and have interacted with octopuses know that they are friendly and will lay a tentacle casually over you if you stroke them. Also that they have at least three different temperamental humors: passive, aggressive and paranoid and that they are playful.  Their aquarium caregivers are extremely fond of them.

 Octopuses are not the most attractive creatures, but not much of what lives under the sea is. How many times have  we been told, "Do not judge a book by its cover.)?