Family who gave their nine-year-old son an octopus reveal how it changed their lives and destroyed their home after giving birth to 50 babies

An Oklahoma family had no idea that a birthday present for their nine-year-old son would lead to the birth of 50 baby octopuses, several water tanks that took up half a bathroom, and thousands of dollars in food supplies and water damage repairs.

Cameron Clifford, a 36-year-old dentist, said his son Cal had been obsessed with squid since he was three.

‘Every birthday, every Christmas, every holiday, he always said, ‘All I want is an octopus”’ Clifford told New York Times.

In October, Clifford called a local aquarium store and acquired a female California two-spot squid for Cal’s ninth birthday. They named her Terrance.

Terrance turned out to be larger than expected and soon started laying eggs. Clifford documented the journey on TikTok, where his videos garnered millions of views from 400,000 followers.

“Don’t get a pet octopus unless you’re ready to lose sleep and your kids’ college fund at the same time,” he said USATodayin jest.

When Clifford told his son they could order an octopus from a local aquarium store, the nine-year-old immediately burst into tears.

“His ultimate dream, his cloud nine, the greatest thing that could ever happen in one’s life had just become a possibility and he just broke down,” Clifford said.

‘Of course my friends and family all, as you can imagine, said to me: ‘Well, now you have to get it to him. You can’t just dangle it in front of him and then turn around and just touch that dream.” the father added.

The father and son began to prepare for the arrival of the pet octopus, which they named Terrence.

Clifford ordered a saltwater tank, a pedalo system and food supplies for Terrence, mostly from Facebook’s marketplace. He thought it would cost about $600.

But what the family didn’t realize at first was that Terrence was actually a female who started releasing ‘a chandelier’ of tiny eggs two months after it arrived.

He was told by experts that the eggs were unfertilized and the release of eggs only signals the end of the female squid’s lifespan.

Until one night in February, Clifford picked up an egg and was completely shocked.

“I hit it by accident and this blob comes out and spreads these tiny tentacles and makes three swimming strokes across my point of view,” he said.

Terrance the octopus ended up hatching a total of 50 babies and ‘all bets were off’, he said.

The family had to arrange 50 separate homes for the unexpected offspring, spend thousands of dollars on clams, crabs and snails, not to mention the cost of repairing the damage to the house from spilled water and a small electrical fire.

Speaking of one particularly messy incident, Clifford said: “I wish I wouldn’t have opened that valve like that and dumped all that dirty seawater on my children’s white carpet.”

Meanwhile, the desperate father began calling aquariums and research facilities, begging them to take the babies off his hands.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. ‘A lot of work and emotions and money and time.’

‘I don’t know if we’ve been fully prepared for any of these challenges, but the hope is to get home as many as we can.

‘And those that we can’t, we will figure out a way to keep them alive and be responsible. It’s not a really concrete plan, but we’re doing pretty well so far.’

The experience is overall joyful and rewarding, as he said: ‘It’s been an absolutely fun experience, not only for me, but for my children as well.’

Two months after hatching, half of the babies are still alive, an astonishingly higher than average survival rate.

“Every scientist I talk to is always kind of amazed by the fact that we were able to get such a high yield in a children’s bathroom,” he said.

And Terrence is still alive, Clifford said.

‘She is fine. She just lives the rest of her life in her tank alone. She will probably die in the next few weeks, although my assumptions about her have been consistently wrong.’

The family has also become famous as Clifford has amassed nearly 400 thousand followers on TikTok.

“I think there’s a lot of people out there who had this crazy dream when they were a kid and then it kind of ran away as they got older,” he said.

‘I think they also really empathize with the sort of stereotypical story of a father who decides to give his child a pet, and then of course it turns out that the father almost exclusively takes care of that pet, except for the nines in this case .’