@esoterik said:
I remember comming accross this years ago, its entirely possible that this thing was written back before google took over the search world, and all that was available for search was shitty sites like webcrawler, yahoo, and excite. I am almost certian that the article is over a decade old.
*EDIT* Or at least those particular quotes quoted above are over a decade old. The article linked by the OP seems to be a re-hashing of this by some teacher in san antonio, i.e. this is what the teacher does every year, but now decided to blog about it, and has little to no actuall information in it. I do know this is actually a very common lesson plan among teachers of the lower grades.
The quotes may be, but either the whole tree octopus operation isn't or it became an internet meme without anyone noticing. At least there is apparently new tree octopus merchandise from december 2010.
<edit><ot> Somewhere else on that site there is also this hilarious conspiracy theory spoof involving SpectateSwamp's former employer and... um... Big Foot. Coincidence? I think not! </ot></edit>