I didn’t much think that was your picture. The kid looks sorta scared of something and I doubt it’s the croker sack.
I’ll just get one of these and it will make everything all better. Right?
Note that some creatures are still permitted to harvest them:
I’ve never heard of a croker sack, nor seen a Kroger store. If you’re talking about what I think you are, I’d call it a burlap bag.
Yup.
Gunny sack here.
That blows my mind. I would have thought that someone was pulling my leg. I wonder if that animal is what gave the Discovery Channel the idea for future evolution in the series “The Future is Wild”. They proposed the Swampus, a huge terrestrial octopus.
Are you sure you aren’t conflating the 3 legged race with the gunny sack race? We always tied the left leg from one person and the right leg for the other person in a 3 legged race. The gunny sack race was sticking both legs into a sack and hopping.
Darryl Lict-- they used to be pretty common all through the Orcas Islands up through the BC coast. Part of the problem in the 19th century was the Kwakiutl potlatches, but now I don’t think we have much of an excuse anymore after they stopped modern harvesting. Probably toxins in the water.
Sad to watch, just like the fate of the longhorse. . .
Wouldn’t a good way to protect the tree octopi be popularising sasquatch fur and leather?
The problem with that is that sasquatch have a strong musky smell. You’ve been around ferrets, right? Imagine a seven foot tall, three hundred pound ferret, and the smell would knock you out. I know that the smell of the tanning products is quite strong too, but there’s no telling if it would overcome the musk…or co-mingle.
Ahh yes. We did the gunny sack race, too. But I remember using them for 3 legged races, also.
It would help if they weren’t so tasty. MM… tree octupiii …
[Homer] Calamari on the tree branch. {drool}[/Homer]
I think it would just be called a sack here in the UK - or at least the default understanding of the word ‘sack’ would be a bag made from coarsely-woven cloth, perhaps with a drawstring.
Help fight my ignorance here – the tree octopus is fake, right?
Sailboat
I’LL never tell. 
I’d say burlap bag.
I had heard “gunny sack,” but around here, it’s usually “burlap bag.” When I saw “croker sacks” in the title, I had never heard of it. However, amateur hunters often put frogs (croakers,) crawdads, and rabbits in a burlap bag, so I thought of frogs, not crocuses.
There’s an ugly connection, too. When a dog breeder’s prize Blue Tick Coon Hound had a litter by the neighbor’s mongrel, some breeders would “sack” the puppies, tying them in a gunny sack and drowning them in the river. I often wondered if that’s why a worker is “sacked” when he’s fired.
Apparently, maybe:
From Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898:
My bolding.
Nuttin’ in there about tree octopii, though.
Sailboat, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
Yes, Sailboat, there is a Pacific Tree Octopus. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
How could you doubt the “People for the Ethical Treatment of Pumpkins”?
Here in CA, a gunny sack refers to a burlap bag, about the size you would keep 50 lbs of chicken feed in.
They are also useful for fighting brush fires.