I only understood it because I took a folklore class for my grad program last year, and we read David Thomson’s The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend. I really enjoyed that part of the class, and when I saw your username I was all like “Oh! Hey!” 
I understood Selkie’s username because I read a lot of fantasy and folklore.
Selkie, your skill as a writer needs to be acknowledged as well. This wouldn’t be half as funny without your sense of pacing.
I have to wonder: is Fish’s “threat behavior” documented in some scholarly journal somewhere? (Not to mention Buddy’s monthly lunacy?) This is the kinda stuff that allows people to relate to critters that aren’t as warm and cuddly as Emperor Penguins or White Tigers.
This story ranks right up there with the dogs-in-elk tale.
I just took a good look at -Getting Closer-…
HAWLEY SMOOT !!! Am I looking at teeth that slant backwards???
That means that once Fish latches onto something there’s no way to get him to let go short of lopping his head off with a meat cleaver!! When it comes time to feed him has he ever been known to leap for the food?!!! :eek:
'e looks almost cute in the alien picture… kinda lochie.
i do hope he doesn’t know the secret location of your seal hide while he is farting around the house.
Aww, thanks for that compliment. What I lack in imagination is compensated for by a rich stock of weird experiences!
You can’t actually see Fish’s teeth in any of the pictures, but alas, I’m in no way going to reassure you about the slant of his teeth. I’m as sure as I can be without actually prying open his capacious maw and looking inside that his teeth do, in fact, point backward. Everything from the shape of his jaws to his method of attacking large prey suggests so. I keep some largish frogs that definitely have backward pointing teeth, and they attack in the same manner he does.
Fish prefers small prey that he can “vacuum” by drawing water through his mouth, but he can and has killed and eaten fish as large as he is. They are voracious and highly competitive eaters, probably driven in part by the need to feed as much as they can while their temporary ponds contain water, and anything made of meat is fair game. There was a time when I naively believed it would be possible to maintain multiple lungfish in the same tank as long as they were properly fed. In my defense, at the time there was almost nothing published about how to care for them, and the strategy I employed was standard practice for other large, carnivorous fishes. Alas, one of Fish’s siblings paid the price.
At the time, both Fish and his sibling were of identical size. One day the sibling decided to eat the end of Fish’s tail. In retrospect, that was probably a sign of hungry rather than territorial aggression. I returned home that afternoon to find Fish consuming the other lungfish by lunging forward, grabbing a mouthful, and pulling back as fast and hard as he could to rip off a chunk of meat. He’d then swallow the piece, and resume his attack. To say it wasn’t pretty a pretty sight is an understatement.
Fish’s other sibling met a freak accidental death almost peculiar to lungfish: he drowned. A lungfish deprived of atmospheric air will eventually suffocate. This fish had retreated to a tank ornament, probably to escape his siblings, gotten stuck, and drowned.
At this point, Fish should be kept in a much larger wood, concrete, or acrylic, tank, but until I can rearrange the family room I’m going to have to continue making massive water changes, keeping his surroundings calm and peaceful, sending up prayers to any gods who listen to the pleas of fishkeepers - and keeping the carpet scrubbed. I wish giving him to the Shedd Aquarium were an option, but unfortunately almost all donated fish are chopped up and fed to their permanent residents. If all goes well, Fish has another fifty years of life left in him. I … don’t. I consider it my responsibility to ensure that after my death, he has a home that will cherish and respect him. Some preliminary inquiries to local fish geeks suggest that as long as I maintain contact with serious keepers, someone knowledgeable will take him in. I know I should place him sooner than later, but I can’t quite bear to give him up.
I honestly don’t know. My guess is not. Most of the hard scholarly information available on peculiarities like Fish and Buddy back in the day centered on physical characteristics, such as Fish’s breathing ability and Buddy’s toxic venom. Behaviorial characteristics, outside of a few generalities, didn’t seem to draw much attention. There’s probably not a lot of financial incentive to study such thoroughly noncommercial species in great depth. A lot may have changed since I acquired them, but I don’t have access to a good research library any more. I’ve seen another captive stonefish shedding like Buddy did, but it never occurred to me to ask his owner about the monthy lunacy. He may not even have known; few people keep their stonefish in the living room, as I did.
With the clarity of hindsight, Fish’s ability to generate threatening noises makes perfect sense. He puffs up his head in identical fashion when he’s drawing in a deep breath, and to make noise he’s just expelling it through his mouth again. Still, in all the time I’ve owned him, this was the first I’d ever heard him do it.
Mama Zappa may be pleased to hear that in addition to the family making BWAAAP noises in the direction of his tank, we’ve also started making grand theatrical pointing gestures and intoning “ohmygoshthatthinghasteeth” in a variety of styles. Trust me, it’s funny in context. But Fish may have the last far… er, laugh.
When Fish goes to the surface to breathe, he stands on his tail and does a disturbingly accurate interpretation of the famous Jaws poster. Shortly after my teasing him, I heard a soft, but very distinct sound during this ritual.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: Fish now “farts” while in the water!
rocking chair: thanks for that disturbing explanation for Fish’s desire to travel around my house. Perhaps it’s time to stash my sealskin upstairs.
SeaCanary: is your username a Beluga whale reference? That’s the first thing that leapt to my mind, at any rate. I love listening to the Shedd’s whales “sing.”
Beaucarnea: I never thought about it until you said something, but there’s almost always been an inverse relationship between the threat level posed by a pet, and the reassuring nature of its name. “Killer Canine” was a sweetheart, but trust me, you guys never want to meet Snowflake the dove…
You’re welcome. Weird perhaps, but dayamn if it ain’t fascinating.
Yupper. Sadly, I’ve never heard a live whale sing; recordings for sure and they are very cool. There’s a deleted scene from the movie Master and Commander that shows “Lucky” Jack Aubrey allowing the crew to sleep with the lamps lit because the crew think the singing of whales is the sound of some malevolent spirit. And there’s no doubt they can sound pretty spooky if you don’t know what’s going on.
But it’s also a reference to my hobby of singing songs of the sea; chanties, forebitters and the like both traditional and modern. Been doing it for quite a while now in the DC area. The ship’s chantyman was occasionally called the canary.
Had a cat named Caligula once. What a love.