VOLUME: UP ISSUE #7

A FISH STORY

      Fishing last night at Lake Wowbegon, I witnessed a wonderful and curiously seasonal sight.   It was a little after midnight as a gigantic full yellow moon rose up over the calm waters. The batfish were not biting, but who could have minded on such a beautiful night? Lost in a silent reverie I became fixated on a certain sparkle on the water that was not behaving like the other reflections. Gradually it became apparent that what I was looking at was not a reflection at all but a pair of glowing, flickering yellow eyes floating slowly in my direction!
      As it got closer, my initial trepidation melted into amused curiosity as I realized that what I was seeing was the top of a hollowed-out pumpkin with jack-o-lantern eyes cut into the half that remained above the water line.   A floating Halloween Killroy!
     Inside this clever boat stood a shadowy small creature that gradually I recognized as being none other than award-winning, reward-gobbling town mascot and otherwise all around charming entity Al Camus, the groundhog.   Using his huge tuba first as a sort of rudder, he steered his vessel slightly to the left and pretty much stopped. Then he took a huge breath of air and blew it into the instrument. Initially this produced only a garbled warbling bubbling noise, but after several more huffs and puffs there suddenly emerged from the water a huge cloud of fish, each one suspended in it's own floating bubble!   When one bubble popped and a fluttering fish dropped through the air, Al caught it in his mouth and gulped it down!
     I'd been here since about nine. Hadn't caught a fish all night. There was Al, his "boat" spinning merrily around as fish after fish dropped into his gaping, skyturned head!

-Thomas Truax, Oct. '00

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger"
-Al Camus

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Copyright 2000