One more thing to carp about

First it was the killer bees; then murder hornets, and now, to our horror, we learn of the invasion of the gargantuan, gluttonous goldfish.

Who woulda thunk it? An innocuous little bowl-bound critter disguising a potential ecological disaster? Call it “Revenge of the Flushable Pet.”

It’s real enough though. Naturalists have been hauling goldfish the size of overinflated rugby balls out of lakes around the Twin Cities. They figure these overgrown house pets were once circling a bowl on some kid’s dresser. Whether the li’l fishy’s master got tired of walking it, or if it proved inadequate as a watch fish, failing to alert the family to immanent nighttime shark attacks, no one knows. But what is certain is that some soft hearted suburbanites couldn’t bear to send their little finny charge off to see the city via a fast and final flush, but rather rehomed it in a nearby lake to befriend the other fishies and grow to become a destructive golden demon of the deep.

The trouble, y’see, is that that little goldfish is basically an overdressed carp, cousin to the bottom feeders roiling up the shallows and backwaters, cousin to the invading Asian species leaping out of lakes and rivers to smack passing Sunday sailors smack in the face, cousin to all those carp we’d just as soon be without.

Of course, the fact that there are carp over here in the first place is our own dang fault. And by “over here” I mean the whole western hemisphere … all the solid ground – or in this case, fresh water – from sea to shining sea.  As if there weren’t already enough fish in the sea … and lakes and rivers, ponds and streams, carp were brought to the Americas on purpose – Europeans, never having had walleye, had been eating carp for centuries and  arriving on these shores, figured a Friday carp fry was just what the country needed. So in 1872, Julius A. Poppe imported five common carp from Germany. Dumped them into a California pond and with a whole lot of encouragement – yes, encouragement! – from the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries and its state counterparts those five common carp became way more common than anybody planned.

Whoops! Didn’t see that coming.

But then we didn’t see the starlings coming either. Shakespeare mentioned a starling once in Henry IV and Eugene Schieffelin, a big fan of both birds and the bard decided New York’s Central Park should be home to every species mentioned in every poem, play and couplet. Of all the larks and nightingales, only the descendants of the 100 starlings set loose March 6, 1890, are still with us … all 200 million of them.

But let’s not forget about the sparrows nesting under our eves, the ash borer killing our trees, the pigeons decorating our sidewalks, and even the earthworms under our feet. They’re also new to the New World. When we talk about this being a nation of immigrants, members of genus Homo are just e pluribus unum.

And now, on top of COVID, climate change, and critical race theory, we have outsized fishbowl fish to deal with.

Aquatic naturalists are looking nervously at carnivals and county fairs where folks are being lured into tossing ping pong balls into little fishbowls to win their very own mini-carp swimming in its very own zip-lock baggy – just waiting to find its home in a stream or river near you. A fate far more likely than finding it’s forever home one somebody’s dining room table.

Why? ‘Cuz, as a former goldfish owner, I can assure you the habits of those little domestic bowl dwellers are just as disgusting as their feral cousins. After cleaning the fishbowl twice, I was ready to start teaching my pet some new tricks – like, roll over and play dead.

 Fortunately for the ecosystem, they were all fast learners.

Let’s hope all those county fair fish receive the same kind of education.