Dead Fish in a Box

The chronicles of a suburban fishpimp trying to keep it rural.

My Photo
Name:
Location: United States

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

The No-Fish-Havin' Blues

Remember when you went on vacation? Remember when you got back and had to tell 1,001 people how you vacation was? You got pretty tired of telling people how great the vaca was. Well that's what I'm going through right now - I've got 130 different customers wanting to know why their fish didn't show up.

You wanna know why? I'll tell you why.

The sockeye salmon you've got on sale? Yeah, it's still in Alaska. Yeah, seems they got this "work slow-down" on up there at the Anchorage airport - the guys who get paid to put the fish on the planes aren't putting fish on the planes. The fish we ordered to arrive on Sunday? Yeah, it should be here tonight (Tuesday). No, it's not going to be rotten, sure, it'll be fresh as a daisy, I'll guarandamntee it. You want some Rockfish? Yeah, well, you see, the U.S. waters are closed to fishing, so we have to get it from Canada, but the Canadians had this holiday-thing on Monday, so no Canada was closed. They should be out of their Labatt-induced stupor by now - we should have more by tomorrow - that is as long as the Tom Ridge and the T.S.A. don't decide to look for terrorists in the boxes of dead fish.

Oh, and the truck of salmon driving down from Alaska? Yeah, it's gonna be late. He's stuck in Tchesinkut Lake, BC. I guess he hit a moose. That's right - the fish is late because he hit a moose.

It's like that movie "The Perfect Storm," - the perfect storm of seafood is swirling around my desk - only there's no calm at the eye of this storm.

Just the same question 130 times over.