News You Can't Use: Monster-Sized Goldfish are Taking Over an Alberta City

I've always assumed the purpose of goldfish is to provide children with an easily understood lesson in mortality and the exciting secondary functions a toilet can perform. That and maybe poor memory analogies, but even that's pushing it as far as I'm concerned. As it turns out, there are also "monster" versions of our forgetful die-easy friends and they're literally "taking over" Alberta City. Canada, I don't know what to say. At least our cities get conquered by credible threats like mole people and drug addicts in cartoon costumes.

Workers have dipped nets and a naturally occurring chemical into a storm water retention pond near Edmonton in a bid to kill thousands of unwanted goldfish that have made the water body home.

Goldfish that won't die swim that rivers of Bizarro World. Fortunately a "naturally occurring" chemical (cyanide) can be used to coat nets in doomed, fifties monster movie style attempts to save Edmonton.

Officials say the aquatic invaders are the result of goldfish reproducing after people released their unwanted pets into the wild or flushed them down the toilet.

Look what you goofball macgundies did. Our ecosystem is done like dinner.

Leah Kongsrude, St. Albert’s environment director, says she’s seen captured goldfish up to 30 centimetres in length, compared to ones sold by pet stores that measure only about two centimetres.

Since I'm American I have no idea how big or small that is. You might as well be speaking Sanskrit.

Kongsrude says goldfish are hardy and can out-compete naturally occurring species for food.

It sounds like the plot to a Sci-Fi Channel Original. Tonight: Whoa Canada, The Monster Goldfish Power Play.

Crews used nets on Tuesday to remove the reddish-gold swimmers and also applied the chemical, Rotenone, which is used to remove unwanted fish species from fresh water.

We'll be pouring chemicals into our fresh water. Don't worry, it's fine. That awkward moment when the "alien reptilian" conspiracy cranks are fully vindicated. We gotta stop those "reddish-gold swimmers." Coming up with synonyms for my high quality writing, it's a lot harder than it looks. 

Kongsrude said the city is lucky the fish are just in the pond and not in the Sturgeon River, which flows through St. Albert. 

Yeah, you really caught a break, Canucks.

“We pumped this pond down and froze it right to the bottom in the winter and they were back in the spring. So they can live with very limited oxygen and low water temperatures.”

We're running out of non-nuclear solutions.

“As much as your cute goldfish is in your tank, as soon as you let it out into the natural environment they grow, they become very competitive,” said Kongsrude.

Somehow your dead goldfish are undergoing some sort of dark resurrection and returning as unkillable monsters.

Alberta Environment has also come up with what Kongsrude called the best way to dispose of a dead fish — a fish coffin. 

Hey tuna, here's your tin.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.