Fish

We have a bald eagle at the Nature Station. She's 24 years old or maybe a bit more. Eagles eat a lot of fish in the wild so she gets fish to eat at Nature Station. Sometimes I get to feed her some pieces of recently thawed fish - I'm talking about 2" thick bisections of fish that smell, well, fishy. I often wonder where the fish comes from. Our rats/mice that we feed some of the animals come from some company that only raises rodents to feed animals like ours (who knew these things existed?). But, what about the fish?

The other day one of my co-workers asked me if I could help him and to grab a few trash bags. That's always a sign of fun to be had working here - "grab some trash bags". I went out front and there were these two guys standing next to a pick-up truck. A pick-up truck with the back full of giant, dead fish. And I don't think they were that fresh. My co-worker says he'll take whatever's under 2'. One of the men pulls out this huge metal hook and starts tossing fish around in the back of the truck, looking for the smaller ones and helping the smell rise into the air. I'm staring at the size of the fish amazed at how big they are and that they're from our lakes. Apparently we have carp fishing competitions and no one keeps the fish - so it's these guys jobs to get rid of them. Nice. All the while the guy in the pick-up truck is talking about stuff like the weather with his southern drawl and hoisting fish up into the air and into our garbage bags. Completely normal. Nothing to it. Maybe after I'm done putting the fish into the freezers full of dead animals I'll go boil some bird heads. You know, whatever.