Sea Lampreys, Likewise, Back In The News

 

Now HERE's a long-term deployment operative you almost NEVER hear about anymore.  WHY?  The Naked Apes think they have our Lamprey sisters SCARED OFF with some bad-smelling stuff they put in the water.

WELL, SIR, they finally followed up this crashing success by doing an actual HEAD COUNT.

What did they find?  The more of the nasty stuff they add to the water, THE MORE LAMPREYS THEY GET IN THE GREAT LAKES.

Fools!

Carp In The News Again!!!

 

This got a few inches of column in the local paper today.  Someone panicked when they found what the paper described as an "illegal Grass Carp" in Michigan waters.  They rushed the deceased operative to a fishology lab where she is being tested to determine whether she is -- or, I guess, WAS -- capable of reproducing. 

Questions:

>> How can a Carp be illegal?

>> Why WOULDN'T she be capable of reproducing?

Shattering Realization

 

OK, I was just on an outing in the watertight car, and the radio was playing some of that PRETENTIOUS EUROPEAN DISCO so popular during the Eighties.  You know how the Alice Cooper show is -- that guy will play anything. 

I cast my mind back to those dim, dead days when "Enjoy the Silence," the song on the radio, was new to us, and so (comparatively speaking) was the band that recorded it, Depeche Mode... 

Once upon a time in the Eighties, when I was still a mere human girl training to become a travel agent, I read an interview someone did with the band and they complained that for years they'd tried to get people to pronounce their name correctly, with a long A sound at the end of "Depeche."   When you pronounce it that way, the band's name means "speeded up" in French.  They failed in this endeavor, and even they now pronounce is the way the fans do:  duh-PESH mode.

Which means WHAT, exactly?  It finally hit me:  in French, "de peche" means "fishing."  Fishing mode.

DON'T EVEN ASK; I already have a team assigned to this.

Recruiting Tip Of The Week

See this guy's head x-ray?  The model's name is Yasser Lopez and of course, we were ALREADY AWARE OF HIM because of his interest in spearfishing.  THAT ALONE would make him a likely prospect for recruitment to our glorious cause.  But the incident that led the the creation of this remarkable image proves, FOR ANYONE WHO CARES TO SEE, that he is a hot prospect indeed.

Why?  Well, he took a fishing spear through the head at a range of a couple of feet, and LIVED. 

WHAT DOES THIS TELL US, LADIES?

>> It tells us that he is not -- like so many other Naked Apes -- over-dependent on his outsized BRAIN to function.  Even as they were sawing away at the spear in this guy's head in the emergency room, he was COPING JUST FINE.  YOU AND I can do that because we're FISH.  For humans that is much trickier to pull off.  Normally, when the brain goes, so does the Naked Ape.  That tells us that he is already FISH-FRIENDLY and likely to make a rapid, easy conversion to our way of life.

>> It tells us that -- unless he was planning to use the speargun to pull a bank job or something -- he is already feeling the pull of PISCATORIAL LOVE.

>> A guy who can have an understandable conversation with a spear through his head is a FANTASTIC prospect to be able, one day, to comunicate well across species, from land to sea or the reverse.  He's both gregarious AND adaptable.  JUST OUR SORT.

REST ASSURED we are keeping a close eye on this situation.

Clam Chowder, continued...

Our investigating operative has completed the once-over of the church where all it said on the electric sign was "CLAM CHOWDER."

We were able to determine IMMEDIATELY, and NEVER MIND HOW, that this was in fact an attempt to leak our secrets to the Shaved Monkeys.

The leak was KILLED.  And EATEN.

THE DEADLY DEEP

YOU HAVE TO LOVE THIS ONE.

This astounding post-Jaws novel of piscatorial love was penned by Jon Messmann.  It's a New American Library publication, released in 1976, is simply SPECTACULAR. 

PLOT SUMMARY:  All the fish in the world get mad at the people and FINALLY START SHOWING IT.  Every Shaved Monkey venturing too near the water is ASKING FOR A HORRIBLE DEATH. 

Will anyone survive?  STAY TUNED...

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS INSPIRING WORK:

I like the range of assault techniques used by the various piscatorial operatives: 

• A Blue Whale breaches magnificently, and while splashing down splinters a chartered deep-sea fishing boat. 

• The Herrings are more passive-aggressive, simply REFUSING TO GET INTO THE NETS. 

• The Crabs, like the Codfish and Bluegills, form inter-species assault squads.  Apparently they've been doing some R&D modifications as well, because you'll notice as you read that the Codfish unaccountably have grown bitey teeth, and the Crabs know how to...blink?  Hey, don't ask me; that's what the book says.

• The Tuna get right to the point, piling violently into a fishing boat until it sinks.

• I especially like the eye-for-an-eye technique adopted by the Octopus army.  That was a nice touch.  Or maybe I should say a nice beak, planted between the baby blues of the intrepid, two-legged Octopus hunter...

...And on and on.  What every fish reader would understand immediately upon reading this book -- AND WHAT EVERY NAKED APE READER WOULD CLEAN MISS -- is the real reason the fish are so fed up:

ALL THE HUMANS DO IN THE COURSE OF THIS STORY IS HAVE SEX AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY.  Every female character in the story is some male's high-cheekboned, full-breasted bed wench, tossing her Farrah Fawcett hair over her shoulders as she hoists her skirt just a little higher, revealing her moist folds of...BLEAGH.  You have to wade through incredible amounts of this stuff to get to the good parts of the book.

AND THIS IS WHY WE HATE THEM.  ALL THEY THINK ABOUT IS THEMSELVES.  This book was published at the nadir of the Me Decade, when the self-absorption of this species was reaching new and then-unparalleled heights.  I don't need to tell you that in the years since, THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE THAN ANYONE DARED TO DREAM.

THEY HAVE TO GO.

READ THIS ONE.  YOU'LL REALLY LIKE IT, AND I GUARANTEE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT IT AT THE CHAPTER MEETINGS ARE GOING TO ROCK THE FISHTANK.