The Starfish.

A Parable for My Times.

The starfish is a carnivore, a predator. There are different varieties of starfish, each with its own Epicurean specialty. The ones here in the Northeast prey on mollusks such as clams and oysters. They are voracious, and a single starfish can eat as many as 50 clams in six days.

If you have ever tried to open an oyster with your fingers, you know how strong they can be. Starfish employ the tactic of patience to overcome this resistance, though. Wrapping their arms around the intended victim gives the appearance of friendship, but that “hug” is relentless and will not relax until the oyster, exhausted, is finally forced to open.

Starfish have nasty eating habits. With the oyster now exposed, the starfish everts its stomach through a hole at the center of its body, so that the stomach hangs inside out from the starfish. The stomach lining comes into contact with the oyster, where it begins to exude digestive enzymes and will absorb the dissolving oyster. When finished, the starfish retracts its stomach back into its center and wanders off to find its next meal, leaving an empty shell behind.

If the starfish loses an arm through some mishap, it is capable of regenerating a new one. In fact, if the lost arm still has a piece of the center of the starfish attached to it, the arm too can grown into a second starfish. Oystermen, whose oyster fields were threatened by a sudden population explosion of starfish in the 1960’s did not know this. Each starfish they dredged up from the bottom was cut into as many as five different pieces, and the pieces thrown back into the water. Instead of addressing the problem, they inadvertently compounded it.

Starfish may be difficult to kill, but they do have natural predators. There are some mollusks, crabs and sea slugs that have made a specialty of eating starfish. Sharks have even been known to take a starfish. For the most part though, other aquatic predators won’t touch a starfish.

Today, while musing on life’s little twists and turns, I wondered what I would do if I were a sentient oyster and there was a sentient starfish hunting in my oyster bed home. I wouldn’t be able to reason with it. I couldn’t overpower it. My best course of action might well be to lay low and hope not to be noticed. This would mean I’d have to sit by and watch my oyster friends being predated on though. That is not a pleasant thought.

Perhaps a better choice would be simply to up and leave. I could go off and find myself a new oyster bed. But that would mean leaving my oyster friends behind. And this would be an unpalatable choice at best.

So maybe the best choice in this hypothetical situation is to try and remain invisible until some crab or shark or slug deals with the problem, while hoping some oysterman doesn’t make the mistake of dredging this creature up and abetting it by helping it multiply itself. I really don’t know the right answer to this problem. I do know two things though.

One: Starfish may look like little stars, but they have no luster and will never shine from within.

Two: Every oyster friend I have ever had turned out to possess a pearl deep within.

You can always tell worth by looking deep within.