Giant squid are in the news--though the newscasters can't spell the word--comes out "Tzuqidz" or something equally zitzy. Graphic violent shots--a home video caught a squid attack. Kids play at the beach, in the surf. A huge beaked squid looms from the waves, snatches one, and swallows the kid alive. The beak is long and pointed like a heron's, but toothy as a dolphin.

A second home video shows a businessman wading (in full suit and tie, a surreal detail) at the beach; a squid opens that long beak wide enough to eat half of him in one bite and the rest in the next. More deaths, quite gruesome.

Unlike sharks, the squids clearly spot us, stalk us, WANT to eat us. And over time, they get bolder. Now fisherman are attacked. They fight back with guns, kill one or two squid. Scientists study the specimens, the first fresh ones ever, and confirm they have huge complex brains and may be as intelligent as we are.

I stare out a picture window at the City, so late at night the windows are mostly dark. Brooding over the squid. First contact with one of the biggest-brained beings on the planet, and they see us as nothing but food. I hoped for years we'd someday be able to reach them in the deep, learn how to communicate. Instead, they reached us--but either don't see us as people, or do, and just don't care.

On TV, politicians and scientists debate a viable squid strategy.

The tentative policy they agree on is: any squid attacking humans can be killed, but otherwise they're to be left alone. This is smarter than all-out war: unlike, say, sharks, they'll learn messing with us is deadly but we're an animal that only fights when attacked and spread the word around. Once they learn to avoid us, shipping and fishing should be unchanged, beaches should be fairly safe--squid are deepwater natives after all. They're only being lured up here by hope of easy prey.

Or are they? What's really going on, in the deep? They never did this before. Are we seeing the fallout... no, fallup... from squid POLITICS?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• TV violence = One of my housemates tried TV after work and found violence on every commercial channel. She switched to PBS--and got a show on A-bomb tests!
• Being devoured alive = my carnivorous housemates ate a chicken last night. Not alive. I mean, they were, but...
• Squid = my own repressed opportunism? aggression? lone-wolfism? Not sure. But I'm troubled down deep, and something normally well-submerged is rising to the surface. DANGER!
• But I better not let this coming surface-turmoil distract me from looking for the real cause, down in the deeps. Is something hungry... or ambitious?

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