Da rules: I post an anecdote that may or may not be true. You guess which it is, based on your knowledge of me and my curious ways. Whoever gets it right gets a point when the contest closes. Here we go:

Fishkill

Y'all know what a fishkill is, right? It's when an aquatic ecosystem crashes and the fish die. The cause can be just about anything - pollution, algae bloom, silt, mud from rains, etc.

Anywho...I experienced a fishkill once on a personal level. My aunt and uncle had a farm in Springville, NY. That's a bit outside of what you could reasonably consider the Buffalo area but not so far that we couldn't visit them fairly regularly. During the warm months we kids would take advantage of a nearby pond (or "Lake" if you are in Georgia) for cooling down and showing off. One especially hot summer day we headed to the pond and when we got there we discovered Armageddon.

Dead fish everywhere. Rotting, nasty, chewed on fish corpses littered the shores and decorated the pond surface. We had no idea there could even BE that many fish in the pond. The stink was simply staggering. Swimming was right out - there was simply no way anybody was going to go in that water. There were a couple of half hearted attempts to coerce or dare people into the water but those petered out pretty quickly. Nobody was buying.

Two of the older cousins then grabbed one of the younger ones (not me thankfully) and started dragging him toward the water for some forced immersion. Richard, the oldest of us, put a forceful stop to that. "Knock it off!" he yelled. Richard was godlike in his power and majesty. We mere mortal cousins could do nothing against his will when he used The Grownup Voice. "Are you crazy? This is a fishkill! You can't mess around in the water now! Let him go before I..."

SMACK!

That sound was a smallmouth bass hitting Richard in the gut at considerable velocity. He stopped in mid syllable and looked down at the dead fish at his feet. He looked up at us in shocked amazement. The two ruffian cousins dropped the arms of their no longer struggling victim. We were all stunned - you simply DID NOT challenge King Richard. The air was pregnant with electricity, like just before a huge thunderhead cuts loose. Nobody spoke. Everybody was looking at Richard. Richard was scanning us one by one. He reached a decision.

Richard bent down and grabbed the fish, stood up fluidly, took a planting step and hurled the deceased piscine at a cousin. Things went downhill from there. It was as if that retaliatory strike was the first bolt of lighting of the storm, unleashing the torrents. Everybody grabbed fish and started hurling them at each other. It was a free for all Fish War with scaly defeat at every turn and no chance for any sort of victory.

The chaotic battle surged one way and another. Cousins teamed up, split up (often with devastatingly cunning betrayals) and teamed up again. Perch, trout and smallmouth flew in death as they swam in life. After minutes of devastating carrion carnage the battle suddenly stopped. I don't recall exactly why - perhaps the gestalt that started us on our warlike path worked its reverse. More likely we ran out of dead fish.

It was an especially long walk home from the pond that day. Instead of cooling down we had heated up more and we were fairly exhausted from our fishy skirmish. We walked back under a sun that baked the dead fish stink into our skin, trading tales of our battle successes and comparing the merits of the various fish types in regard to heft and aerodynamics. A general consensus was reached just before we arrived at the farmhouse (to exclamations from our parents on our stench and appearance):

You can throw perch all day, but nothing flies like a crappy.