Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
So if you needed any more proof that the end of the world was nigh, here’s another Jeremiad for you: The Snakehead. Is it a fish? Is it a snake? Can it swim? Can it walk on land? Does it scare the shit out of me. Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Well, maybe it’s not exactly a snake. And maybe it doesn’t exactly walk. But the other answers are all still in the affirmative. This past Sunday at least 80 (that’s EIGHTY, EIGHT-ZERO) of the little devils were apprehended in the Potomac River, according to this story in the Washington Post, where the snakehead is referred to as a “top-line predator.” Nice. The thing I like perhaps the most about the story, apart from its apocalyptic overtones, is this sentence, referring to Mark Hammond, the protagonist of the story, a bass fisherman from Florida:
“I think we have the state record,” Hammond said of the catch behind the trailer lot where he and his friends drink beer and practice bow-hunting.
Um, drink beer and practice bow-hunting? At the same time? And you’re worried about snakeheads? Sir, I think you might have other problems, like the possibility that you will go William Burroughs on your pals and spear them with your bow and arrow while faced on longnecks.
Do you know that line from Shakespeare about horses eating each other in the streets being a sign that the natural order has gone seriously awry? Well, anyway, I think that when snakefish teem in rivers near our nation’s capital, and emerge from the streams to walk on land, only to be hunted by a drunkard with a crossbow, we might well be experiencing a similar kind of situation. By the way, I’m pretty sure that horse thing happened in one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and not in one of the comedies, but you could probably already have figured that out for yourself.
