My sudden interest in the 2010 World Cup did not spring from the competing teams of participating countries in the world.
But rather my curiosity was piqued by eight pinkish tentacles of Paul, dubbed the Octopus Oracle.
Hatched from an egg on January 2008 at Sea Life Centre in Weymouth Dorset England, Paul clutches the world’s attention on its eight tentacles with eight major successful predictions for the 2010 World Cup; the victory of Spain over Netherlands being the recent of his prognostication.
He was named from the title of a poem by the German children’s writer Boy Lornsen: Der Tintenfisch Paul Oktopus.
The invertebrate was seen to possess psychic prowess during the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament.
From then on, he was accurately predicting winners of each of the seven 2010 FIFA World Cup matches that the German team played, against Australia, Serbia, Ghana, England, Argentina, Spain and Uruguay.
The divination process is to present Paul with two clear plastic boxes, each containing food usually a mussel or an oyster. Each container is marked with the flag of a team. The box that Paul will open first is the predicted winner of the game.
The celebrated eight-legged oracle is expected to die before the UEFA Euro 2012 as octopuses are likely to live on an average of no more than two years. “The intuitive invertebrate will “step back from the official oracle business,” Tanja Munzig, a spokeswoman for the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, told AP Television News.
“He won’t give any more oracle predictions — either in football, nor in politics, lifestyle or economy,” she said. “Paul will get back to his former job, namely making children laugh.”
On July 12, 2010, Paul was officially retired. For all you calamari patrons, save the gastronomical wish for Paul because Spain vowed to protect the luckiest octopus in the tank!
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