I’m a fish biologist who actually went to Crofton (just to sightsee - I was in the neighborhood for the American Fisheries Society meeting in Baltimore). There were people standing around waving signs saying “save the snakehead” and “nuke the whales”. It was a real carnival.
I work with invasive species as part of my job, right now mostly with the bighead and silver carps, which are large filterfeeding fish that are taking over the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and tribs. There are literally hundreds of invasives. At the AFS meeting a speaker said that they were averaging one new introduction per day into San Francisco Bay alone. (I’m not sure how that number was arrived at.) Most of them don’t take off of course, but the ones that do can be real problems. For information on aquatic invasives, check out these web sites: http://www.anstaskforce.gov/
Some new ones of concern are the lionfish, a venomous fish introduced to the atlantic coast which is doinq quite well there, and the nuclear worm, a 4 ft long polychaete introduced as fish bait (no news on whether that one is established or not, but the real threat might be the other organisms that still come in with the stuff from vietnam. Clearly, we need better rules on what can be brought into this country. Right now we have a black list of critters that cannot be imported. What we need is a white list of things that we think are OK. There are way to many organisms to list them all. There often is no way of knowing beforehand what will be a bad actor until it is too late. And fish brought in for aquaculture reasons have ALWAYS escaped to the wild (witness the bighead and silver carp that I work with). Now they want to import the black carp. When will we learn. And that’s without breaking the subject of unintentional imports, like ballast water or diseases and parasites brought in with species that we want to bring in.
I figure i’ll eat the snakeheads as we pillage, to keep the army in check so they don’t turn on us. Can we nuke the whales with a nuclear worm? Next time i’m at the beach, i’ll interrogate all the critters i see to make sure they aren’t the Bay Area Invader of the day. (but in this town, how do i tell the invader critters from the normal freaks???)
Okay, okay, here’s the deal:
We will breed the snakeheads with goldfish here at our Secret Base for World Domination. We will have a killer walking fish that can sneak up on people because it’s cute. I figure if they get the Achilles tendon (do you capitalize that?) on the first couple of tries, the victim will fall down and they can go for the throat.
They will also survive the cold weather in Boston, I town I’ve always disliked (those people merging to go under the tunnel to the airport are nasty) where they are legal. (Snakeheads, not people. Well, people are legal in MA, but…never mind. Pay attention!)
I’ll pick out my cutest goldfish…well, maybe the ugliest…we can work out the details as we go along.
Hey! Haven’t you guys read my sig? If anyone’s going to be raising an army and conquering the world around here, it’s gonna be me, dammit! Now, you bozos can either join up with me, or be destroyed!
They are yucky, gross,slimy, ugly, poisonous.
They are often used for golf practice by people at night (which is when they come out).
You have to cover goldfish ponds or they will be eaten by toads.
If your dog tries to eat a toad it may die from the poison.
PETA being hypocritical… what morons. Also, in a fat activist online community I belong to, they’re furious over PETA’s “Stop paying for two seats: Become a vegetarian!” campaign. Really, vegetarianism won’t guarantee weight loss, and it’s mean to kick fat people around like that. I don’t eat meat very often, and I’m overweight (not I-need-two-plane-tickets obese, just pudgy). PETA has issues.
Time to unleash the Martian Hordes onto Tennessee. Huh? They ate some cane toads and got sick??? Those bastards need to read a map, Tennessee isn’t in Australia!!! If y’all will excuse me, i got to go kill me some toads and teach my minions to read…
Bring it on, you four armed freak! You forget who your dealing with, here! Tennessee has produced some of the finest marksmen ever known (or haven’t you seen Sergeant York?)! Damn near 90% of the population is armed (some of them even have certain military ordinances laying around that civilians aren’t supposed to have), and the general reaction when someone sees something out of the ordinary around here is to kill it.
In any case, I think you’ll call off your invasion plans once you realize that I have some rather compromising photographs of your sister and a certain Starfleet captain.
[Foghorn Leghorn]Ties? Them’s for college boys! We don’t like them tie wearin’ college boys down here![/FL]
See, this is why you’re not fit to be an Evil Overlord. You’re under the misguided belief that the quest for world domination is a “gentlemanly sport.” I, however, have no such illusions. I’d shoot James Bond repeatedly the moment I captured him, while you, no doubt, would invite him for dinner and reveal your plans for world domination over dessert, thus giving him time to whip a concealed weapon out of his ass and put an end to your plan.
Nah, everyone knows about her and John Carter, what most people don’t is that during her years of drug addiction, Tars sister was so desperate for money that she had herself surgically altered so that she could appear in a 1960s TV series!
Hey, wait a minute!!! How’d my sister get on TV 15 years before she was born??? Blackmail can’t stop me, i’ll just kill me some Kentuckians! (not really a threat, more of a favor…)
And even the armed Tennesseeans won’t stand up to a naked horde of green Martians. the sight alone would kill a normal man! (Tennesseein’ is believin’!!)
And the problem of taking over the world is once you do, you have to listen to your people argue over tax brackets. It’s much more fun to immediatly adbicate, then try to take over the world again, in a different manner (giant robots…)
Nice pic, Tucker.
For that, when my Snakehead/goldfish take over, I will let you live.
No. No, I’ll take your advice. No dessert for you, Mr. Bond!
Tars! Snap out of it, man! Concentrate on our piscian hordes. Tennesse is on the Big Muddy, we’ll conquor it first. I’ll make the barbecue joint “The Pit” in Dyersburg our local headquarters. That should keep your appetite in check and keep the locals in cash.
There is the story about Mama Plant being courted at the Pit…“He never told you the tale? To amuse your Captain?”
Sorry. I digress.
Aw, come on, you don’t think that they put all those time travel stories on the series just becuase they were entertaining, do you?
Ha! That’s what you think! Remember, you’re talking about a place where men are men and sheep are nervous! Mass your troops at the border! Tennesseans’ll start shooting before you know it!
Tennessee Redneck#1: Look it, Bubba! It’s an army of giant, green homosecksuals!
TR#2: Dang, Bubba! We better kills 'em now before they cross the line! Hate for them to get their green man juices all over the place! Hand me my rocket launcher!
Oh, and Carny, if there’s anything Tennesseans like to do more than shoot guns, it’s fish. The fact that you’ll be giving them an opportunity to do both at the same time will only make them happy!
After we capture Dyersburg and the Pit barbecue joint, and my able asistant begins serving up barbecued snakehead burgers, they’ll be begging to surrender. You’re doomed!
Ha! Proof you know nothing about the South! :wally: If it ain’t pork barbecue, it ain’t barbecue, and them Southerners will take no end of delight in killing you all in the name of preserving their fine, Southern cuisine! (I, on the other hand, would kill to get some decent barbequed beef brisket!)
South? As Papa Plant used to tell the relatives in Tennesse, “You can’t get much more North of the Mason-Dixon line and still be South of it.”
If you have any difficulty figuring that out, my capable assistant and Rand-McNally can explain it to you.
