Deli of Horrors

I've just returned from a deli where I was grabbing a sandwich for lunch.  A normal, unassuming, typical Manhattan deli, just like any of its dozens of counterparts within a few blocks from here.  But while I was waiting in line, I caught a glance of a salad bar salad in a clear plastic container being held by the gentleman in the line next to me.  Right smack in the middle of his salad was a little octopus.  Or a squid.  Or cuttlefish.  Or whatever those wretched little mollusks that people actually eat whole are.

It was maybe 2 inches across.  I've seen these disgusting little things before, but somehow the sight of it on this guy's salad made it all the more surreal.  Here was a bed of lettuce, a couple of hard boiled egg slices, some shaved carrots, chick peas, and... a dead octopus.  Tentacles and suckers all plainly distinguishable.

It couldn't have struck me as any more disagreeable or out of place if it were a dead rat.  Or a severed nose (which is actually a delicacy in some places).  But amazingly, when he presented it to the cashier, she didn't yell, "Aaiieeeee!" and run screaming from the building.  She just rang it up, as if it's okay and normal that people are putting whole dead octopi on their salads (and presumably (though I don't relish thinking about it) proceeding to eat them).

Blargh.