Warfare

Politically speaking, I consider myself to be a pacifist. My only 2 bumper stickers (granted, artifacts of my more idealistic college days) read: "Teach Peace" and "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Go Blind--Gandhi." I don't believe in justified war. I prefer non-violent means of making statements.

However, my job has led me to be a war monger among the population of gnarly fish that inhabit Cap's traps. Sculpin and hornpout are perhaps the ugliest and toughest fish that you'll encounter in a lobster trap. We catch them frequently. When the trap surfaces, the fish are bloated, their air bladders

inflated, and they are unable to descend to the bottom again if we throw them back. So we use them as bait.

This entails first killing them so that they don't thrash around violently, splashing herring brine all over me. But I've been having trouble killing them. I pierce their head with the bait iron and slit their belly with a knife and they still thrash around as if I had just poked them in the eye. They are indestructible fish. Little tanks of the sea floor.

Today Cap demonstrated his methods of warfare against sculpin and hornpouts alike. It is archaic, really. Akin to the warfare of the cavemen. First, you hold the fish by the tail. Get a good grasp on that sucker. Then you thump it with all your might so that it's head hits a corner, knocking it out. At this point Cap slits the stomach and sticks the bait iron through the head. He made a point of stringing it on the bait line upside down, saying that if a lobster walks into a trap and sees a huge sculpin head looking at him, he might be startled and walk right back out. Apparently lobsters can tell that the sculpin is dead when its upside down (?).

I must say, this form of warfare was very effective. The remnants of fish no longer splashed bait juice in my face in their last throws of life and the lobsters are eating them. Mission accomplished!