PEOPLE OF THE STURGEON

OK, I just finished this book; it's a large, hardcover photo essay on the re-establishment of the Sturgeons of Lake Winnebago AND THE SHAVED MONKEYS WHO THINK THEY MADE IT ALL HAPPEN.  The book was written by Kathleen Kline; it was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2009.  The International Standard Book Number is 978-0870204319.

This reminds me of The Best of LIFE because of the big, loud pictures that jerk the reader back and forth between beauty, humor and horror WITHOUT ANY WARNING.  On one page there's an operative swimming peacefully; on the next you might see another operative hanging gutted over the deck of a fishing boat, or maybe a decorative display of the spears used to prong us to death.  Then they change over to a photo of a landscum Sturgeon Cotillion by the water's edge and you think ah, now we're getting to the good part about how much they reespect our kind -- but oh, no.  MORE DEAD STURGEONS WHEN YOU TURN THE PAGE.

Of course, in a general sense, this sort of interchange between the Naked Apes and our operatives is necessary and a good thing.  But things have come to a pretty pass when the only people who can see the horror in our eyes is some freakazoid from PETA.

Normally I am ALL IN FAVOR of fish drawing humans into the water.  But Sturgeons are really not that interested in recruiting, as fish go. They have 'other fish to fry,' to use a human colloquialism.   CAN'T THE LANDSCUM JUST RESPECT THAT AND LEAVE THEM ALONE?  Oh, no, they can't.  Until they feel the first stirrings of Piscatorial Love, they just see them as SO MUCH SANDWICH FILLING. 

Or in the case of Sturgeon, they're just so much CAVIAR.