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.

Full Article.

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

Choose Your Own Adventure #13: The Abominable Snowman

Last time I discovered "TV Wrestling" was actually real and then paid the ultimate price for that shocking revelation. Now it's time to review some R.A. Montgomery drivel that's been hanging around my neck like an albatross for quite awhile. It was the only early book I hadn't done, but for some reason finding a copy proved extremely difficult as apparently there's massive demand and little supply for a forgettable mass market paperback from a long-dead series. After many false-starts and disappointments I finally was able to score a copy and it's even the original and not the sad reissue.

Even more incredible the battered and heavily-taped pocketbook was originally property of a library that's ten minutes drive from my house. If only I'd gone to one of those "library ruined book sales" with the cat lady and that old guy that bellows incoherently at everyone I could have saved myself a lot of misery. But now I guess I have to read it, so there's no dodging that agony. Still, this finishes off the first 20 books. My common core addition skills tell me I should be able to complete every book in about twenty-seven years, give or take and accounting for the occasional 2 + 2 = 5. I can only hang my head and weep silently.

The holy grail of my c.y.o.a. collection.

I'm a mountain climber, an expert at defeating elevated rock piles who has already climbed several "unclimbed" peaks. Just the first person to ever do it, no big deal. I'm also friends with some guy named "Carlos" who receives absolutely no descriptive attention whatsoever. Just throw out a character's name and move on, that's what every good author does. We're a good "climbing team" anyways, which seems sort of odd for a occupation centered solely around the individual and his or her self-destructive "White Whale" quests to defeat objects that aren't even aware of our existence, but I guess someone has to set the ropes or whatever. 

I should also mention we get a map of Central Asia and a "comparative height" illustration of some of the mountains there, I guess in an effort to shoehorn some educational value into this. That's undermined somewhat by a "is such a thing even possible" speech about the Yeti, an intelligent half-man, half-animal that is totally immune to being photographed or accurately described that apparently lives in a part of Nepal where snow blindness and weather-induced madness is a common thing. Suffice it to say, I decide this thing must be real, just like rasslin', and promptly make plans to head for Kathmandu. Now I've got that song in my head. Great.

Funding is provided by the "International Foundation for Research into Strange Phenomena" an organization that will later be destroyed by easily available camera phones but for now represents an even bigger waste of time and money than the United Nations (still better than the Council on Foreign Relations, though). With the money secured it's off to challenge Mount Everest! But first, permits and advice from some guy! Rock and roll.

The real life version of a James Bond villain.

Meanwhile Carlos, remember him that guy with no memorable traits whatsoever, has apparently vanished from "base camp" at Everest, forcing me to make the difficult decision between filling out necessary red-tape paperwork and saving my climbing homeboy from himself. Let's get going on those forms, I'm sure he's fine.

I meet with this guy named Runal who is quick to warn me off my nearly suicidal exploration of the most inhospitable parts of our planet by pointing out it might be "dangerous." What, really? Apparently some hunters with "traps and guns" went after the Yeti and angered them, insofar as a myth can experience such emotions. I'm quick to assure the bureaucrat that my Snowman intentions are entirely above board, but it's pointed out that the feral missing link that lurks in blizzards might not appreciate this distinction.

Instead a safer alternative is proposed: go look for tigers in a jungle. I just report this shit, I don't make it up.

The tired and overweight American middle-aged man of the mountains.

Since this book is supposed to be about Squatchin' in the Himalayas and not about going down a big cat's throat in bleeding chunks I'm not about to be dissuaded. I'm issued the official papers, but now that clerk wants to come along too, because his skills at light filing and preparing S.P.S. reports are sure to come in useful when faced with evolutionary oddities at World Top. How about no.

After the refusal the guy gets as icy as the mountains, shaking my hand without a hint of a smile. I consider an apology and perhaps letting him come anyway. Leave it to R.A. Montgomery to turn a story about mountain adventure into what happens when you're trapped in some government office and maybe you hurt an ineffectual pencil pusher's feelings. Yes, this is great. No buddy, you're not coming. Stop giving me more chances, the answer is final.

Of course I'm punished for this steadfast refusal by nature which deploys torrential rain and mudslides. "Nature has gone wild" I note (It's taking off it's bikini top! Woo!!!!) and the expedition is cancelled forever. Because it rained and, I guess, those official documents I fought so hard to acquire expire after ten days.

Am I being detained? Am I free to go?

The promise of wild adventure, oxygen tanks and furry semi-humans begins and ends in some office. I would imagine other, better, choices actually get you to the mountain and probably into wussy vehicles, but none of that for me. Oh well, at least I'm done with this one and will never need to think about it again. 

Yeti erotica. USA! USA! USA!

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