The Sister and I were flipping through the Sunday paper. It's a novelty for us really because we don't have it delivered and we never read it unless it's just randomly laying around somewhere, as was the case today. I always check the Sports section, not because of actual teams sports, but because of hidden gems like this one supplied in the Outdoors section. It's always something weird and strange and it never fails to be entertaining in one form or another. We both gawked over the size of that Alligator Gar. They're monsters, no matter what size and is why you won't catch me, swimmer of swimmers Miss Otter Girl, taking a dip in any southern waters that I can't see the bottom of. These things are creepy. And they're not all that's out there lurking in those waters. So, I started scanning the article and relaying pertinent information until it simply became ridiculous. The way it was written, I couldn't help but swing into this backwoods southern man accent, which is probably exactly what those two guys in the photo sound like. Then things got real weird. The guy in the red shirt, his last name is Skinner. After reading that name out a couple of times all we could think about was Assistant Director Skinner from The X-Files, so we just changed everybody else's names accordingly and hilarity ensued. It was like a strange play of Mad Libs.
First of all, the article is weird in and of itself. So, bowfishing is apparently a thing? As in hunting fish with bows and arrows. I knew about noodling, where you wear high waders and stand in submerged tree stumps and thrusts your fists into the water and come up with a catfish... swallowing your hand, your fist down its gullet. No, thank you. But bowfishing. Strange. They basically shot a million and two arrows into this alligator gar for an hour. Just this one, as they'd already hauled in two others that weighed about 100 pounds each. This one? He was 7 feet long and weighing almost 200 pounds. It was caught in an oxbow lake off of the Miss River near Vicksburg. That just means that this water used to be part of the Mississippi River. So how do The Sister and I end up enjoying life you might ask? Reading an article about taking down alligator gar with bow and arrows in my best southern boy accent and then mashing fandoms together. Fun, right? Yes! Skinner and Mulder were in Vicksburg hunting this monster alligator gar like ya do, but everyone's southern, because why not and you get such turns of phrase as "the gar get shallow" and "Dude, I think that's a tree in the water, but I want to go look at it." "I eased up on him" "the fight was on" and "he wasn't even hardly having to swim." "Mulder was holding two bows, I was holding two bows. It was a fight." To the death! Scully was present to haul the gar out of the water (most impressive!) and The Lone Gunmen were there to record it all on video for posterity (naturally). And the Celebrity Hunter (they have those?) Dean Winchester was in Mississippi to bowfish with Skinner, and he's apparently opening a museum so he took the gar off their hands. I'm sure it's an in the moment you had to be there sort of amusing, but I will not lie, it made our afternoon. As daughters and granddaughters of fishing people, we even understand what all of this means. The water heats up and the gars move to shallow water, slowing the boat down to move next to the gar, checking around trees to find the gars or to even see if it might be a gar, and holding your pole while the fish fights in the water to be free. But man, those phrases all laid out in the article were just funny. Perhaps it was because it was so grammatically incorrect and written to be read as the most daring adventure story to rival those of the Edwardian era that it was just ridiculous. I may know how to fish, but it doesn't mean that I watch fishing shows where men wrestle fish to death from their boats because I find it all exceedingly boring. But, this article was only exciting because I read it in a southern accent and subbed cool characters out for the real people. And who fishes for gar anyways? I thought they were a nuisance to fishermen. Like you set up your trot lines and when you check back it's only a damn alligator gar all tangled up in it, and you have to now deal with getting it out of there and re-baiting. Or perhaps that is only my uncle's thoughts on them. And with that mess of a sentence sounding about as southern as Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, do I really have any room to poke fun at this article? Or, do I have all the qualifications to, in fact, make fun of it without any ensuing repercussions? Hrmm...
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
Categories |