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March 21, 2007
A Quiet Crime
I once caught a fish off Bronte Beach in Sydney, a zappy little speck which I brought home and put in my marine tank. It pleased that he had no trouble adjusting to tank food, and in fact he quickly developed a taste for it. Days passed and he was more and more the voracious feeder, barrelling others out of the way, nipping their fins if they were slow to react. This behaviour began to extend to non feeding times, and I realised I’d introduced a bully into the system. So one day when my dad and I were off to the fish shop to acquire more victims, I took him from the tank and, when we passed the sea, I put him back into it. It was not the sea from whence he came, though, no riding the swell of the surf nor fresh tang here. This was a bay full of rocks and bottlecaps, a few boats floating atop a realm dark and still, thick with grease and empty of his fellows.
Posted by Sam Bowring at March 21, 2007 10:38 PM