Black and grey traditional-style tattoo of an octopus with its tentacles wrapped around an anchor, placed on the outer thigh.

Octopus wrapped around an anchor on a thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey octopus has its tentacles curling around a shaded anchor, with the head at the centre and suckers drawn along each arm. Bold outlines sit alongside soft grey shading on the body and rope-like shank of the anchor, giving depth and a slightly raised look. The tattoo fills the frame against plain, warm skin, with a white towel visible at the left edge.

Traditional Thigh Octopus Anchor Tentacle Sucker Sea

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody aboard the Patience Rose believed Eli Tranter when he said the octopus had taken the anchor on purpose. Old Mick laughed into his tea. The mate said an octopus couldn't lift forty pounds of galvanised iron, and Eli said it didn't need to lift it, only to hold on and wait for the tide to do the rest. He had seen it from the quay at first light, eight arms wound round the flukes as tight as a drunk clutching a lamppost.

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They fished the thing out of the harbour mouth that Thursday with a crab pot and a bucket of mackerel. It came up grey as wet slate, its skin pebbled with suckers that gripped the rail the moment it touched it. Eli put his hand near the shank and one arm lifted, slow and deliberate, and laid itself across his knuckles. Its eye was the colour of weak tea, and it regarded him the way the harbourmaster did on a Monday.

They argued through the afternoon. Mick wanted it back in the water. The mate wanted it in a pot with lemon. Eli sat on an upturned crate and let the arm stay where it was, and when the tide turned he felt the weight of the anchor shift in the chain. He understood then that the creature had been doing the same job all along, keeping hold of something heavy so the boat wouldn't drift onto the rocks.

They let it go at dusk. Next morning the anchor was back in its locker, the shank printed with rings of small round marks, neat as stitches, and nobody mentioned it. Eli only smiled and went to wind the winch, and the harbour gulls went on shouting about nothing.