Just An Encouraging Word

This image is being posted as a reminder.  ANYONE can become aquatic if we want them to.

Who's Recruiting Whom?

I just wanted to post this zaniness as a combination THANK-YOU and HUZZAH in praise of all the creative, out-of-the-net recruiting strategies I am seeing and learning about lately.  This gif, labeled "Silver Carp Tennis" on the Internet, makes clear that the Asian Carp campaign is not just a flash in the pan but an ongoing PHENOMENON bringing in recruits like...well, like these guys.

 

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, LADIES.

The Burble This Week In The Fish Conspiracy...

...is all about THIS recruit (L) and THIS recruiter (R).  Lisa Lobree was walking along in Philadelphia, on her way to a fitness class on Labor Day, WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD.  Imagine her surprise when she caught a Catfish full in the face.


HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?  Believe it or not, this was simply a nonstandard, fairly rare form of recruitment for our Glorious Cause.  As the species called "dinoflagellates" by the landscum, and the honorable Barracuda, often work together to recruit Shaved Monkeys, so too can fish and the birds that hunt for them.  The bird got clean away without even identification by specie.  The Catfish -- a fully-aquatic operative without a human name -- was pilloried in the press as a FREAK OF NATURE.  He was no such thing.  He was daring as heck, I'll give him that much.  And -- much more so than the RCMP -- HE ALWAYS GETS HIS MAN.  Or in this case, woman.  This was the clearest possible message that I hope the recruit was able to read.  Lobree, an enthusiastic angler, has a long history of COMING TO THE FISH.  It should now be quite clear to her that the fish are also COMING TO HER.


Full disclosure at your next local chapter meeting.

The Storr Lochs Monster -- Concealment Operative

 

BEHOLD a Shaved Monkey artist's impression of the "Storr Lochs Monster," a fishosaurus recently freed from entangling rocks in Scotland after what appears to have been a LONG WAIT.  While this noble creature SERVED US WELL during her lifetime in a fully-aquatic capacity, she has now MOVED ON to a more museum-based setting, with the goal of distracting the landscum's attention from the OTHER good works of the Piscatorial Forces in Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, and indeed AROUND THE WORLD. 

 

SHOW SOME RESPECT!

THE BIRDS

WHY, you ask, am I reviewing a book about BIRDS on a blog with an all-FISH audience?  Keep reading and you'll see...

Frank Baker's The Birds, ISBN 978-1-939140-49-4, is a story told from the point of view of an old man looking back on his youth.  He's living in a post-apocalyptic world with just a few people living in BLISS.  He's dictating his memoirs to his daughter, who has never known life BEFORE THE BIRDS CAME.

He describes the 'pre-bird' London of the 1920s in great detail: soul-crushing hamster-wheel jobs, airless rooms, gray streets under leaden skies, Shaved Monkeys drinking in bars and questioning the very fabric of their existence...and then the birds come.  These are not the Crows, Seagulls, and Lovebirds Alfred Hitchcock used in the movie of the same name.  These birds are of no identifiable species, but they crowd out the usual Pigeons and Sparrows people expect to see in London, and they elude identification by changing their size, shape and color, seemingly at will.  They show up singly sometimes, or sometimes in flocks.  They commit terrorist acts and DISAPPEAR,  leaving not even a feather behind them, no matter how bloody the confrontation.  The statements they make about human society range from the purely comic -- say, leaving a splotch of doody on the head of a politician in the middle of a fiery speech -- to the horrible -- for instance the day they descend upon a group of homeless people sleeping on the pavement, and KILL and EAT them.  They somehow bring a drought with them when they come, and descend en masse to all the water reserves in England, drinking it up, leaving nothing for the humans.

IS THIS STARTING TO SOUND FAMILIAR, LADIES?

The protagonist -- a young man filling out papers in an insurance office by day and trying to separate from his widowed mother in the evenings -- learns the secret of the birds from a woman he falls in love with.  FACE the bird that comes for you, she says, ACCEPT the bird, and you'll be fine.  This sounds very odd to him, but his own personal bird appears to him one day, and he lets it (as he thinks) attack him.  But there's no attack.  The bird disappears.  Suddenly he feels CHANGED.  From here on in he is able to stand by safely and WATCH THE WORLD END.  Everyone who hides from the birds is KILLED and EATEN.  Nobody is left in England except a few people who simply looked their own personal bird in the face and let it come to them.  He never says this in so many words, but the main character makes pretty clear that the bird that came for him was PART OF HIM ALL ALONG.

After the mass KILLING and EATING of the human race by those who have not come to grips with their birds, the rain comes at last.

Just writing about this book makes me want to turn back to the first page and READ IT ALL OVER AGAIN.  The scene with thousands of people crammed into St. Paul's cathedral, listening to a sermon by a man they call -- I crap you negative -- THE PRIMATE -- at the moment the birds arrive is absolutely INSPIRING.

I HOPE THIS IS STARTING TO SOUND TO YOU LIKE WHAT THE FISH ARMY IS DOING ON A DAILY BASIS.  Every one of you -- fully human fish lovers, landfish, the transformed aquatic monkey, and the fully fish human lover -- is IN THIS STORY.

Ponder this image as you read Baker's book:

An Image For You To Gaze Upon

 

THIS IS SO MUCH CLOSER TO THE TRUTH THAN THE ARTIST HAS PROBABLY GUESSED...

Says Here They're Studying The Northern Leatherside Chub...

Behold the operative known to Naked Apes as the Northern Leatherside Chub.  (Where DO they come up with these names?)  They are known -- AGAIN, this is what the Naked Apes THINK they know -- they are known to live in ONLY ONE PLACE IN THE WORLD, the tributaries of a couple of rivers in Utah, AN AREA NOT KNOWN FOR ITS DEEP AND WELCOMING BODIES OF WATER.   In fact, the best-known body of water in Utah, Salt Lake, has a way of SPITTING OUT the landscum who try to swim in it. 


So they are TERRIBLY WORRIED that at times, these scanty creeks tend to run dry.  WHERE DO THE LEATHERSIDE CHUBS GO???  They are deploying drones, special film equipment, and the usual array of water testing gadgets to figure that out.  WHY?  Not to find out our secrets, amazingly.  They really believe that a species that has gotten by for UNTOLD CENTURIES without the assistance of Naked Apes will DRY UP AND BLOW AWAY without their help now.


Let them study these plucky, drought-resistant fish.  A percentage of the intrepid researchers are turning into fish as I type this, AND THEY DON'T EVEN KNOW IT YET.