AND I CALLED HIM DARWIN

Have you ever eaten a worm?

Worms to my way of thinking aren’t really all that appetizing. It is not so much the flavor as it is the texture. They, the worms, should never be chewed. They are gritty when chewed. They must be swallowed whole, like spaghetti.

Fish on the other hand have a somewhat less fastidious dietary preference than I do. Thus, being a fisherman, I was bent over and in the process of turning over a large flat rock in search of some nice, fat, juicy wigglers to use as fish bait when I first became aware of him.

Sounds as such are really not all that much to be concerned with unless it is a train whistle blasting in your ears moments before it removes your automobile from its path while you are still in the drivers seat, thus giving you good reason for singing, “nearer my God to thee,” or perhaps a raging bull elephant trumpeting his displeasure moments before he smashes you flatter than a crepe suzette.

But there I was catching worms when I first heard the creature.

At first I thought some poor soul was having an asthma attack. You know what I mean. A terrible gasping and wheezing and then a thrashing about in the weeds, then more gasping and wheezing. I had never heard such an agony of sound and the hair stood up on the back of my head as though it too was fearful of whatever was making that dreadful noise.

The sound grew louder as whatever was making it drew closer. Gasp, wheeze, choke, more thrashing about. The weeds and small saplings crashed and clattered together in a frenzy of movement. It was quite obvious that whatever was making the insidious racket was in terrible and insufferable agony.

On one hand as you can imagine I was of a mind to seek the thing out to see if I could relieve its suffering, but then on the other hand I wanted to flee.

My quandary was solved when out of the weeds along the shoreline staggered the strangest creature I have ever seen.

I hesitate to tell you what I saw that day for fear you will think me mad but please I beg you, before you pass judgment on me hear me out and then, if that selfsame judgment be harsh at least I will have rid myself of the terrible burden I have carried these many long years.

Yes, there among the rushes at the shore was a creature few men have seen for there was a fish! Yes, that is right, a fish! But you must know that this was no ordinary fish but a fish like I had never seen before or since.

It was huge, five feet long at the very least.

He, (I was to eventually learn from obvious reasons that it was a male,) he floundered there in the shallow water at the shoreline unaware of my presence.

Gasping and wheezing, wheezing and gasping, he lay there on his side until he was able to drag himself a little further into the water using his fins as poor hands. It was slow work and I stared from my concealment, mesmerized by the creature’s behavior.

I was expecting to see him throw himself into the stream to swim away and was the more puzzled when he thrust his head beneath the surface. I could see his body shake in a paroxysm of convulsions and then he lifted his head again with a great sigh. Again he thrust his head under the water’s surface and I could see his chest expand and again he raised his head. From where I stood concealed I could see relief in the creature’s eyes.

Surprised! You ask if I was surprised? In my long life I have never seen such a sight. It was obvious that what I was watching was one of those rare oddities of nature, a freak if you will. What I had discovered that day on the bank of the river was a fish all right but a fish that had never learned to swim! That’s right, there, mere feet from me was a swimless fish!

Finally, after refreshing himself the creature made his way back up onto the shore and disappeared in the weeds and the thick foliage that grew there.

This was such a strange sight that for several days and weeks I went back on a regular basis to spy on the creature from concealment. Though I was curious I didn’t want to frighten the beast. I must admit I watched it with no small amount of pity and some small feelings of compassion.

I have never been what one would consider a strong swimmer so you might say I understood his fear.

What agony of spirit the creature must have been suffering. Imagine if you will its lonely existence separated as he was from his own kind, unable to converse in his own tongue for it has always seemed obvious to me that fish have a language.

Oh what a lonely existence. He lived on land and visited the river, that which should have been his natural habitat, briefly to gasp the life giving fluid into his lungs and then back to his exile. Oh what a tragedy was being played out before my eyes.

One day I followed him, careful so as not to make my presence known and thus was how I discovered his place of hiding, a hollow tree, where he curled up to sleep amidst old spider webs and dry beetle dust.

Imagine what an existence this poor, poor fish lived there on the shores of the river. A lonely outcast from his own kind, grubbing for worms, splashing around in the shallows for crayfish and the occasional frog. At least that is what I thought until one day I saw him eat.

It was early morning and I was surprised to see him already on the stream but in a position I had never seen before. He was lying between two large logs that partially dammed the river at that point. There he lay with only his eyes and nose above the water’s surface and it was quite obvious that he was intent on his task whatever it might be.

As luck would have it the river was forced between those two logs and every fish that passed that way had to migrate between them.

Curious, I watched and then I was shocked for as I watched a large carp, perhaps eight or nine pounds started to swim that swift channel. There was a lunging movement, a splash and the carp was gone, engulfed. I was at first surprised but then I was filled with repugnance for I realized that, due to its handicap the creature had become that most odious of creatures, a cannibal, an aberration.

The carp only whet the creature’s appetite. I watched as a mallard hen and seven little ducklings swam down the stream to travel the same dark route.

I hope you will forgive me but now, where once I had felt pity, that emotion was replaced by a sense of repugnance and deepest revulsion.

As time passed I noted a marked scarcity of small game in the immediate area where at one time there had been an abundance of rabbits and raccoons and the like it was now rare that I saw anything where the beast hunted. It was obvious that he had a voracious appetite.

I also noticed that the beast no longer splashed and floundered in the river but now he made his way quite nicely, venturing into the forests and woodlands of our region.

Strange as it might seem his fins were no longer so much like fins as they were crude but efficient hands and legs. Yes, strange as it might seem, what I am saying is that the creature was evolving and evolving into a formidable creature.

Several times I had noticed that Darwin, yes, that is what I called him; Darwin, was watching me and in that gaze was something calculating, almost sinister; something that sent chills up my spine.

Almost a year passed and one day as I made my way down a familiar forest trail that I had used many times before I stepped over a vine and something, I know not what caused me to look closer and it is well that I did for I was terrified by what I saw.

That vine, so natural and yet somehow out of place was part of a well laid trap, a trigger device designed to? Yes, designed to do what? I glanced around and there, almost over my head, delicately poised to fall was a heavy log, a log large enough to kill a deer, or, and with the thought I carefully backed away, a man.

Darwin, that poor fish that I had studied with pity, was a killer of a high order with a mind that could conceive a trap which could crush a man’s skull so that he could, and I tremble at the thought, be eaten.

Then one day my faithful old dog, my companion of many years, old Poop, dissappeared. At first I thought that old Poop had wandered off but days passed and he didn’t return.

It was about a week later that I was deep in the forest when I saw Darwin again. I was shocked, overwhelmed, and if you do not mind my saying so, I was terrified by the change that had taken place in the creature.

What I saw skulking through that shaded woodland was like nothing I had ever seen before. Stooped in form with heavy brows he moved as a hunter. His eyes were constantly moving and no longer did he flounder his way clumsily along but now he moved with a lithe animal stealth. In one large rough hand he carried a heavy club but the thing that took my breath away was the skin that covered his shoulders. Now I knew what happened to my dog, my faithful old dog, Poop.

Time comes and is gone.

Events fill our days.

Life goes one.

There were rumors about a strange beast that roamed the woodland and streams. It was seen and as swiftly, gone. Hunters told of shooting at some shadowy thing but no one knew for sure.

Ten years passed and there were rumors also of hunters and fishermen vanishing without a trace.

Another ten years passed. I was no longer a young man but I still enjoyed a nice mess of bass occasionally and thus it was that I found myself back in that place where I had first seen him.

I had learned by living in close proximity to a creature that would kill me and eat me if he could. Yes I had learned to be very observant and thus it was that I saw him.

He was lying in the shallows in perhaps two feet of water.

He was old, very old.

On the shore nearby lay that stout club and a pile of skins that he had covered himself with. Obviously he had been in the process of bathing, really a very civilized thing to do when you consider it, and he had fallen.

Unable to rise again he had drowned.

Carefully I approached the still form and picking him up I carried him into the forest and buried him.

He is there still, my old friend, Darwin.