Meet the little wanderer

Here he is: the octopus.

While at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts a week or two ago, Stella found a story about a travel service for stuffed animals. And yesterday, at breakfast, she asked about it again. Only this time, she was angling for an octopus vacation. (Yes, Stella has a plush octopus. Of course. He's part of her collection of "animals that should never have been made into plush toys.")

Now, the service we saw described, Unagi Travel, offers trips for your loveys to Japan for the bargain price of $35-55. But given our circle of friends and family, I think we can do better.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it: Show the octopus around.

Going somewhere cool on vacation? Live somewhere that's NOT Minnesota? We'll send you the octopus. You document his visit, in the form of photographs of seeing the sights, sampling the food, enjoying the views. Send us the pictures, and let us know what he's looking at. And then forward him on to his next destination. 

Our responsibility: logistics and support.

We provide the octopus, of sorts, and provide an address for his next destination and pay the postage. We'll also post the pictures and descriptions here. Along with maps. 

So...who's in? Where is the octopus going first? Contact me, either here or on Facebook, to set up a trip. Oh, and hey: if you're already somewhere awesome and you wish you could show the octopus around but we can't get him to you in time, we will also accept submissions from other cephalopods, of your choice. Or, you know, whatever you've got.

C'mon: how can you disappoint this kid?

You can't.

So start thinking about taking this wily mollusk on your next trip.