Otus the Head Cat

State is training pool for counter-terrorism fish

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Photo/David Gottschalk  6/5/9--Dewayne French, assistant manager with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Mammoth Spring National Fish Hatchery, displays a  paddlefish. It is among 87 pounds of paddlefish released Thursday into Beaver Lake from  the Hickory Creek Marina.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Photo/David Gottschalk 6/5/9--Dewayne French, assistant manager with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Mammoth Spring National Fish Hatchery, displays a paddlefish. It is among 87 pounds of paddlefish released Thursday into Beaver Lake from the Hickory Creek Marina.

Dear Otus,

I don't know who else to ask, but you helped me get action several years ago when I spotted the White River Monster near Jacksonport. Your vast knowledge of fuliginous and delphic subjects seems to us mere laymen to approach omniscience.

So, what were those black government trucks dumping into Beaver Lake on July 5? I couldn't get close enough to see and I'm getting the runaround from Game and Fish.

-- Jack Alope,

Springdale

Dear Jack,

It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you again.

I well recall the stir you caused in 2007 at Jacksonport State Park. I'm glad they caught the thing at the mouth of the nearby Black River.

I understand the White River Monster's 4-foot mounted head has been moved from the visitor center to an interpretive pavilion and diorama where the Mary Woods No. 2 paddleboat was moored before it sank in 2010 and was sold to be converted to a restaurant in Batesville.

Park officials tell me that last year myth and legend lovers came from 42 states and 11 foreign countries just to see the coelacanthish head of the legendary critter.

Omniscience? Pshaw. I have no special powers. My secret, if any, is that I possess a liberal arts education. I was an English major at Electoral College in Des Moines (Home of the Fighting Wombats!) where I received my graduate Head Cat training.

Head Cats (there's one in every state except North Dakota, which has banned domestic cats) are trained to organize the vast amounts of data funneled to us daily by our extensive network of highly trained observers and informants.

To research your inquiry, I contacted Frances Griffiths, my intrepid correspondent from Bella Vista. She covers the four-county region of Benton, Washington, Carroll and Madison. Being a retired abecedarian, Frances spends most every waking hour scouring her sources for information vital to you, the citizens of the Natural State.

Frances is but one of my 24 correspondents (there's currently a vacancy in the Miller, Hempstead and Little River district due to an unfortunate bale wrapper incident last month) blanketing the state in an ever-vigilant vigil of surveillance.

It took Frances only half a day to connect the dots between the "suspicious" behavior you witnessed with a recently declassified Department of Defense memo about military training for fish.

With the recent CIA reports that al-Qaeda's top bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, is working on an explosive that can be hidden in iPhones and laptops, it gives credence to the rumors that al-Asiri was also training terror fish to swim up our rivers and create havoc.

Rest assured that the U.S. agencies are not asleep at the wheel. All-American fish are being trained, too, as counter-terrorist agents. And it's taking place right here in Arkansas.

Despite your being turned away last weekend, the training program is no longer classified. In fact, the Obama administration's Aquaculture Readiness Director Emmett L. Brown seemed eager to discuss the program when contacted Wednesday.

Brown reports that Arkansas-bred paddlefish hatched at the Mammoth Spring National Fish Hatchery are being trained in counter-terrorism techniques by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a 16-acre pen located near Hickory Creek Marina on Beaver Lake near Lowell.

"Paddlefish are natural-born attack fish," Brown said. "They will defend America's estuaries and intracoastal waterways to the last fry.

"I wouldn't want to be on the business end of a miffed school of adult paddlefish," he said. "They are supremely territorial and have a no-tolerance policy toward interlopers."

The training at Hickory Creek involves showing the fish underwater videotape of minstrel sweetlips (Plectorhinchus schotaf) attacks. Sweetlips, natives of the Persian Gulf, are notorious carriers of dreaded streptococcus.

The training is being conducted in cooperation with NATO and Her Majesty's Ministry of Ichthyology under the supervision of Royal Marine Maj. Reginald Avery-St. John (pronounced A-vrie sin-JIN).

"These feisty little buggers have been known to de-bone something as fierce as a dugong and other sirenian mammals of the Persian Gulf and Eastern Mediterranean," Avery-St. John said from his RV at the Hickory Creek Park campground. "I pity the finny malefactor with mischief on its mind approaching these shores."

The paddlefish training continues quietly on Beaver Lake with tours offered every Saturday. Brown declined to comment on how many adult fish (they grow to 4.9 feet) had already been transported from the pen to the front lines. That's as it should be. Keep al-Asiri guessing.

Until next time, Kalaka reminds you to always catch and release. Unless it's a dugong or sweetlips.

Disclaimer

Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears every Saturday. Email:

[email protected]

HomeStyle on 07/12/2014

Upcoming Events