When Fish Fall from the Sky, What’s Up?
Dear Bay Weekly:
There I was, just chewin’ the fat and swatting mosquitoes with a friend at Chesapeake’s Bounty [a crab market] in Prince Frederick on a recent Saturday, when boom, something hit the roof. Then, plop, a fish landed on the driveway.
Our first thought, believe it or not, was that somebody had a beef with us and had thrown the fish from a car as they passed by on Route 2/4. Upon closer inspection of the fish, we saw that it was fresh and the head had been chewed off, so if it was some unknown enemy, we decided it was one we never wanted to meet.
My friend put the fish (I don’t know what kind it was; I don’t know fish. It was silver and slippery and about eight inches long) in the dead crab bucket. We speculated for a few minutes about what had happened. What if the fish had hit us? That would have hurt, because it came down awfully hard.
The next person to stop by happened to be a waterman, and he explained that a fish hawk had probably dropped it. Chesapeake’s Bounty is a couple of miles from water on either side, so that made sense. But why would a bird carry its food so far from the river or Bay to eat it? He couldn’t answer that.
Nevertheless, we accepted his answer as fact and felt a little better about things.
But the story doesn’t end there. An out-of-town customer spotted the fish in the dead crab bucket while looking over the crabs for sale and said, “Oh! You sell fish too!”
“No,” my friend replied, “that one fell from the sky.”
The customer backed away, returned to his vehicle and drove off, leaving no time for an explanation.
My questions to the general readership of Bay Weekly are: Has this ever happened to anyone else? Was the waterman’s explanation sensible, or is there a very angry person out there somewhere who’s biting the heads off of fish and throwing the bodies at people? Should I invest in protective head gear? Please advise.
— Kathy Winters, St. Leonard
Seabrook and Bay Weekly: Two Good Reads
Dear Bay Weekly:
I was impressed with Brent Seabrook’s article on our boat in the Governor’s Cup sailing race [“The Fates of the Race: Stalking the Governor’s Cup”: Vol. X No. 32, Aug 8]. He is an excellent writer: Clear, concise, interesting, funny with a good way with words. It was good reading. I’ll send a copy to our children so they can read about what we are doing.
In fact, I was impressed with the whole publication. Don’t know why I’ve never seen it before. Probably because I never pick up extra reading material. I am inundated at home. I especially enjoyed the article [by Sonia Linebaugh] about the rain garden. I’m trying to figure out how I can implement some of the ideas. Wish I’d done it last year in preparation for this horrific drought.
We really enjoyed having Brent aboard Stalker and hope he can join us again in the near future.
— Edith Holt, Annapolis
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