It seems impossible to ignore either one. Hagfish come to mind at this juncture; I’ll explain why.

As I mentioned in a recent column, the hagfish, a primitive, eellike fish, ejects slime in order to protect itself and to chase away competitors for ocean floor carrion, which it apparently considers a delicacy.

Similarly, most cephalopods, including cuttlefish, squid and octopus-the deep-sea octopus is an exception- eject some kind of ink in order to elude their attackers. Cephalopod ink contains chemicals that numb, irritate and even deactivate the sensory organs of moray eels and other predators.

In these early days of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, the sliming and inking activities of the aforementioned underwater creatures bring to mind the evasions and obfuscations of our American politicians and other government dignitaries.

Just as hagfish use slime, squid use ink and magicians use smokescreens for their hocus pocus, some politicians use words to obfuscate, confuse, blur, muddle, jumble and cloud the subject at hand.

The release of ink to hide one’s actions or intentions may seem primitive and clumsy to us, although politicians release pages and pages of print for the same purpose, when they’re not tweeting. To release gallons of slime, as the hagfish does in order to confound would-be attackers, may not be considered a suave move by some, but we, the public, are being slimed every day by some of our nation’s leaders.

Our attorney general, William Barr, for example, likes to use words that people would have to go and look up if they wanted to understand the point he is making. I believe he throws out words like tendentious as a sort of intellectual slime.

“Oh, wow,” a person might say, “this guy is talking way over my head! He must be really smart!” and then just move on without bothering to figure out what Barr is actually saying, which is as a general rule pretty much “my president, right or wrong.”

I admit that I did look up the word tendentious, and it means biased, prejudiced or partial, as when the AG himself observes a situation or Supreme Court ruling tendentiously, with a jaundiced eye.

The hagfish has often been called the most disgusting animal in the sea, and in fact the whole world. They look something like eels and are quite ugly, which I guess is why they’re called hagfish. The reason the hagfish has survived for millions of years, and also the reason it is so disgusting, is that it produces huge amounts of slime from 100 glands that run along its sides. I watched a video of a scientist reaching into a pail that contained an agitated hagfish and pulling out a quivering, elastic, transparent, semi-solid mass of slime.

When sharks or other fish attempt to attack a hagfish, this slime can clog their gills and kill them.

Of course, as we all learned back in grade school, sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Like many other things we learned in grade school, this isn’t true. Words are extremely powerful for good or evil, as any songwriter or politician worth his or her salt well knows. Still, there is a limit. While the words of a politician may confuse, delude, waylay, derail, irritate, numb and even deactivate an opponent, words, unlike hagfish slime, cannot physically clog his gills and kill him. Probably.

Yes, it is still January. Are you still working conscientiously to keep your New Year’s resolutions?

I am at least thinking along those lines, but I’m procrastinating. I am eating the foods that my doctor advised me to eat, without entirely giving up the ones she advised me to avoid. I fully intend to follow her guidelines in the near future, say beginning in February. And no, I have not started my walking regimen. My excuse is the ice.

Last week I was discussing this subject with a very nice woman who was ringing up my groceries at Price Chopper in Lake Placid.

“At least,” I told her, “I remembered to bring in my own bags! This is a first.”

“If you forget to bring your own bags next time,” she said, “then we’ll know for sure it was a New Year’s resolution.”

Have a good week.