Jose is nowhere to be found. He pawned the space octopus and the related paperwork 
off on Nushi after sneaking in the back door 
to avoid me last week. He really doesn’t like confrontation.
He’s around here somewhere, but there’s no telling how long he’ll hide for. He can be harder to find than a space octopus when he wants to be! I can’t wait for him to show his face, though. I have a 30-page
code violation waiting for him on my desk, and I can’t wait to see his face 
when I drop it in front of him. He hates paperwork so much 
When he opens it he’ll realize that I already filled it all out, it’s just waiting for his signature. But seeing his momentary panic 
is going to be so satisfying.
I was maybe a little hard on Nushi when she gave me the paperwork she had done for Jose. I don’t know why she does his work all the time. If he wants to go on his “adventures” 
, he can do the desk work 
that comes with them! But I was already on edge after weeks of worrying about Jose and the octopus, and Nushi unfortunately got the brunt of my frustration 
. So now Nushi is avoiding me too. I’m sure I’ll find her in the grungle enclosure if I need her, but I’ve been giving her space for now.
The good news is, the 
space
octopus is back in its enclosure
It’s been pretty grumpy 
since it got back. For the first few days it was just hiding in its play structures, getting extremely aggressive whenever anyone came near. I tried bringing in a bunch of new toys to calm it down, but nothing was working. I finally brought in a vase of flowers 
, hoping some bright colours or new smells or something might interest it. Unsurprisingly, it tried to eat the flowers. Space octopuses will eat just about anything, and they’ll put just about anything in their mouth to try it, not unlike small human children.
After munching on the flowers for a few seconds, it spit most of them out, but it continued munching on the sunflower 
. Then, after days of acting aggressively, it calmly suctioned itself to the window of its enclosure and just hung there for a while. Now seems unwilling to eat anything but sunflowers . I’ve offered all the things we normally feed it, like the leftover meat 
from other creatures’ meals, fruits 
and vegetables 
, and various scraps from Mohammed’s woodpile 
. I tried feeding it “people food” 
that we had lying around. I even tried arranging yellow 
vegetables to look like a sunflower with sunflower seeds in the middle. The octopus showed no interest. It just responded by getting aggressive again until I offered another sunflower. I’m currently running experiments 
to figure out why it likes sunflowers so much so I can try and entice it to try other foods again.
I did manage to get a photo finally, though!
Maria
