Prompt: Flying fish

Maybe it was the rain that did it. When the rain first started, we didn’t know how long it would last. It started on the West Coast, and twenty days later, the rainclouds covered North and South America. There was so much chaos on the ground, I don’t know who first noticed the fish in the air. By the time the rain stopped, they were everywhere.

I remember the first time I walked outside and saw catfish swimming around my gardenia bushes, calm as you please. I stood stock still and stared at them until they swam across the street and disappeared into the woods behind Mizz Mae’s house on the corner.

Those first few days, we all stared and wondered. Some people caught a few fish, but they’re hard to hold on to when they fly straight up in the air, and they don’t take bait from below.

Being so far inland, we just had river fish to worry about. On the coast, it was different. The first shark attacks made national news. The National Guard covered the coastal cities, and citizen patrols started round the clock. But the fish were swimming all over now, and suddenly humans weren’t the top of the food chain anymore.

I had a nasty moray in my attic last winter. I went up to check the furnace when the heat wouldn’t come on, and it had coiled up in the filter pocket. Almost took my arm off. I broke the flashlight trying to beat it off me. Good thing those cleaner wrasses moved in to take care of my arm, cause the ambulance got held back by a school of tuna across the neighborhood entrance.

My brother Joe called me when he saw his first whale. It was Big Blue, the first blue whale to swim across Mexico from Baja to the Gulf. He was living in Galveston and saw her breach in the clouds over the Gulf. Back then, she made national news too. She had a calf the next spring, and they started feeding on shrimp colonies clustered over Imperial Valley. Took out most of southern California’s food crops that year, and people weren’t so happy about them anymore.

It’s been three years now, and I can hardly remember a time there wasn’t a fish flying by somewhere overhead, or rustling around in my garden. Funny thing is, they’re great gardeners. The wrasse keep everything trim as soon as it dies back, and the shrimp take care of all the insects that used to torment my vegetable crops.

I’d always dreamed of opening a shop with fresh flowers and organic produce. I never could have imagined I would owe Contrary Mary’s success to flying fish.

Thanks to <writingprompts.tumblr.com> for another great image prompt!

Dogs in house:	Houdini
February word count:	8749