har-ish

I grew up watching stingrays and, for a surprisingly long time, confused them with helmet crabs. There was something about those enormous, flat bodies gliding through the water that fascinated me. They looked almost prehistoric, yet strangely graceful, as if someone had designed a creature specifically for moving through the sea without making a fuss.

I only discovered much later that stingray is considered a delicacy in some places. I wouldn’t venture to try it, though. I have always looked at the stingray with considerably more affection than appetite.

My fascination acquired a rather different edge when Steve Irwin died after being struck by a stingray. I remember looking at the creature with a mixture of anger and consternation. Until then, the stingray had been this magnificent, mysterious animal in my head. Suddenly, it had become associated with the death of someone whose enthusiasm for the natural world I had admired.

And yet the fascination never really went away.

I still think of the stingray as the B-2 bomber of the seas. Majestic, strange and beautifully engineered, gliding through the water with those enormous wings.

Stingrays and octopuses are probably two creatures I find disproportionately fascinating. One day, I will probably get an octopus tattooed on myself. The stingray has already been enshrined, though, in a slightly more restrained fashion: on my Seiko King Turtle Manta Ray edition.

So perhaps this little drawing is my stingray too.

Just one that has lost its sting.