The Florida Freshwater Squid
An Overview of History, Habits, and Human Interaction (including such related phenomena as the annual Festival of the Freshwater Squid)
The unhappy epilogue to the event, which most of my companions on the boat probably do not realize, is that almost immediately after mating the male squid will die of fatigue and old age. The female will survive only long enough to ensure the successful birth of her young. The mayfly squid does, in fact, live up to its namesake.[30]
Distinctly Floridian Festival Rituals
Afterwards, climbing out of the boat and onto the dock, there’s nothing left to do but “party,” as several teenagers loudly announce as they brush past me to get off first-and they are essentially correct. The mayfly squid has played its part in the Festival and will not be seen again in the flesh. However, the iconography of the squid, its role as a motif in the Sebring subculture, is just beginning as festival-goers head back to the Historic District.
The full gamut of Florida tourism ingenuity is on display here, from plastic squid and squidsicles to glow-in-the-dark squid rings and a few tattered plush squid. Squid hats proliferate to such an extent that for long hours it appears that a sea of squid have left the lake to stroll around on land atop pale mannequins. Balloon squids with tentacle tassles are a favorite among the children, who run up and down the increasingly sizzling sidewalks in bare feet. Delicacies such as squid ink ice cream[31] are hawked by vendors who seem unsure of the tastiness of what they’re offering to the public. Vendors pace back and forth, selling T-shirts that read “Squid for a Day,” “Experience the Festival,” and, criminally, “I Like to See Squid, Mate.”
The farmer’s market set up opposite the Old Town Hall features a squid chili contest in the mid-afternoon, proceeds going to the charity Habitat for Humanity. Squid chili event organizer Sarah Townsend, also the town’s treasurer, offers passersby sample cups of chili. Townsend is, I have been told, a festival fixture, and not only at the chili contest. Townsend wears a squid costume that glows green with silver running lights but she also, in special translucent pouches affixed to her costume, carries live mayfly squid with her down the parade route. Every year, Townsend is sent off in the first boat launched, balanced on the prow like a figurehead, the other boats, by established tradition, made to follow the light of her squid-like luminescence to the breeding waters. Once there, in a dramatic ceremony that I did not get to see because other boats blocked my view, she releases her pouched squid into the waters of Lake Jackson while reading a poem written for the occasion by local balladeer Michael Cruikshanks. (The one irony of this gesture is that by holding the pouched squid back until this time, she almost certainly prevents them from mating and thus they die without propagating.)
“It’s important,” she tells a local television reporter for the six o’clock news. “It’s true that some of this is tacky, but you have to be sincere about the squid on some level. Otherwise, how can it be fun?”
The End of the Festival
The late afternoon, punctuated by suffocating heat, proves to be little more than an opportunity to catalogue more squid-related phenomena. Many of the locals, preparing to turn their attention to televised racing events, have already changed into racing T-shirts and NASCAR caps. This leaves the tourists free to browse through the festival crafts show. More than 100 artists attend, some traveling from as far away as Alabama and Mississippi. Squid-specific objects are, of course, showcased, from paintings of squid (usually anatomically incorrect) to abstract sculptures of squid-like objects locked in an embrace. One participant from Boaz, Alabama, water color specialist Alison Stine, admits that the squid festival is part of a longer Florida summer circuit: “If it was just this festival down here, I wouldn’t make the trip. I make money, but not enough to justify the expenses.”
At the center of the crafts show, the Lake Wales Little Theater and the Highlands Little Theater have joined forces to put on a production of Hines’ “Dr. Johnson I Presume,” a play in three acts that dramatizes important scenes from Edith Johnson’s life, including her first encounter with the mayfly squid. In Sebring, naturalist Johnson is no more forgotten than she is in high school biology classes: she has entered the popular mythology of the festival as the first and only martyr to the squid. The tourist shops sell postcards of Johnson in her distinctive bathing suit alongside images of the Kraken, squid mills, and Elvis.
The pleasantly bohemian feel of outdoor theater permeates even the impromptu book stall, Hal’s Book Corner, wedged between a jeweler and a wood carver. It features Hines’ stories for children, in bright, glossy covers, and such staples of the squid book trade as Richard Ellis’ overrated The Search for the Giant Squid. A few Dover editions of old marine biology studies round out the selection.
