I’ve been in mourning the last couple of days. I’ve hung my 3-D glasses at half staff and considered wrapping my cubicle in black creché. Paul the Octopus is dead.
Paul, as you may recall, earned a measure of fame by becoming the world’s most prominent eight-tentacled sports prognosticator. Though born without a spine, he fearlessly (and successfully) guessed eight World Cup matches—bucking 256-to-1 odds and becoming a cephalopod hero to some, prospective calamari to others. (Here’s Paul in action, predictly picking last year’s World Cup champion.)
“He lived a long, full life,” one of my co-workers told me. But two-and-a-half years doesn’t seem like a particularly long, full life to me … particularly when most of it is spent floating around in an aquarium with the world staring at you through, um, fish eye lenses.
Yes, the Oberhausen Sea Life Aquarium, Paul’s home, said Paul “died peacefully of natural causes,” according to ABC News. But Paul’s life—fraught as it was with news conferences and television cameras—was not completely natural, and I can’t help but wonder whether Paul’s demise might have been hastened by the sorts of pressures most octopi never have to deal with: celebrity.
Paul’s predictions became worldwide news, and with each successful pick, the creature’s fame grew. The press dubbed him everything from “Psychic Paul” to “Paul le Poulpe,” and countless fans watched his predictions live. He grew so big, the aquarium eventually hired Paul’s own agent. And when Spain won the World Cup Final, celebrants in the country were shown waving octopus banners. According to ABC, the town of Carballino offered 30,000 euros to move the tentacled wonder there so he could serve as a mascot for the town’s food festival.
One wonders whether Paul refused on principal.
But fame is not always an easy path, and Paul had his detractors. He received death threats, of sorts, from the fans of teams he picked to lose—many of them opining they’d like to see Paul fried in butter. Even critics of Lindsay Lohan never went quite this far. Perhaps all the notoriety got to Paul after a while.
One can never be sure, naturally. Perhaps it was simply, as my friend suggests, Paul’s time. But for me, Paul will always be a reminder that fame isn’t always all that it’s cracked up to be—particularly if you have suction cups on your limbs and a mouth in the middle of your body.
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