Oh yea, it’s just as sexy as it sounds.
So I’ve had this book for a while but never got around to reading it. I picked it up when our local Border’s that was going out of business (sniff, rest in peace physical bookstores where you could waste away a day) and they were pretty much giving books away. It jumped out at me right away, “Sex, Drugs”, and Sea Slime”, plus the added bonus of the octopus on the cover, it was a done deal. I skimmed the first few pages and put it back down. This was a book that deserved to be read properly. Over the weekend I finally decided to explore the Slimy Seas the best way possible – on the beach with a stiff drink, inches from the Blue Beast itself.
This book was definitely worth the wait – Dr. Ellen Prager is brilliant and approachable. While some of the content hovers slightly above my head, it’s a relatively easy read and incredibly interesting. I was able to breeze through it over the course of two days. Prager really gets into the bizarre, dirty and downright freaky habits and behaviors from the deep. From Lobster Urine Wars to the projectile vomiting of Cucumber Intestines and buckets upon buckets of Hagfish Slime, it’s all so disgustingly riveting. She touches quite a bit on Cephs, which makes me infinitely more happy.
Here’s a little excerpt for you featuring said Buckets o’ Slime:
“Along with their gruesome propensity to feed on the dead, hagfishes are well known for their slime, lots of slime. If a hagfish, alias slime monster or slime hag, is threatened or injured, it releases mucus from hundreds of glands along its body. In just minutes, one hagfish can fill seven buckets with slime. The glands of the hagfish actually release a thick white fluid containing vesicles of mucus and bundles of thread-like cells. Like balls of string uncoiling, the threads unwrap; they then tangle, combine with the mucus, absorb seawater, and expand into massive amounts of sticky, slimy hagfish goo.”
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