Gone Fishing

As I've mentioned a few times before, one of my favorite leisure-time activities is fishing. I rarely catch anything, and that gives me copious time to contemplate grand thoughts, plan future achievements, and drink lots and lots of beer.

Now, if I actually want a productive fishing trip, I buy a pint of chicken livers and head down to the bayou to go after catfish. They're voracious feeders, and it requires no artifice whatsoever to get them to gobble down a chunk of liver and take the hook. Let the bass fishermen have their lures, and the trout stalkers their flies, I'll take a goopy hunk of stinkbait any day.

One great thing about catfish is their size. The larger the body of water, the more freakishly huge the fish will be. There is anecdotal evidence of a "monster" fish in Percy Priest lake, near Nashville, of a channel catfish the size of a station wagon.

Just what I like: a fish you have to fillet with a chainsaw and blasting caps.

I've landed fish upwards of 20 pounds, and up until this week I thought I was a pretty studly catfisherman. But a fellow in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam has put me solidly to shame by landing a 650-pounder. That's right ... over a quarter-ton of floppy fish flesh.

He caught the fish in a net. I would have been even more impressed had he "noodled" for it.

For the uninitiated, noodling is a backwoods sport which involves participants sticking their arms into holes in the banks of rivers, under rocks or into other recesses and feeling around for catfish. Very few men who have participated in the sport for very long are still sporting a full complement of fingers, as there are all sorts of toothsome and just flat mean creatures that love holes in riverbanks just as much as catfish. Can you say "snapping turtle," boys and girls?

And let's not forget the unalloyed joy of grabbing a water moccasin by the head. I'd imagine it's almost as much fun as sticking a fork in a socket.

But enough fish tales. Let's see what the Weird Wires have fished up from the deeps this week.

Wake Me For Kickoff

In an effort, apparently, to draw comatose fans to watch the Super Bowl, the Houston Super Bowl committee has put together a first-ever Opening Ceremony event, which will feature a slate of ex-athletes ... and a soundtrack composed by none other than that bigtime party animal Yanni.

That's right. Yanni. My home city's first Super Bowl festivities are going to kick off to the thundering sounds of the man who brought us "Written on the Wind" and "Tribal Dreams."

If you loved John Tesh at the Olympics, this is for you. I'll be at home watching ESPN Classic and listening to Aerosmith.

Rock On

From Weird Chronicles Field Agent (and raconteur extraordinaire) Al Sohlstrom comes this next bit, concerning some strange rock formations showing up in Yellowwood State Forest, in Brown County, Ind.

Now, you might be thinking of some Heartland version of the Painted Desert, or perhaps a religious icon formed from limestone seepage, but not in the Hoosier state. In Indiana, they don't consider rocks to be remarkable unless they're in trees. WAY up in trees.

According to the Brown County Democrat, the whole thing started several years ago, when a turkey hunter spotted a boulder about 4 feet wide and a foot thick, estimated to weigh 800 pounds, well up in an 80-foot-tall chestnut oak tree.

There are a couple of other, slightly smaller, boulders in other trees in the forest, and how they reached their positions has become the focus of several UFO and oddity-related Web sites. There's no bark damage to the trees indicating they'd been thrown there by blasting, and they're too heavy for the trees to have grown up and hoisted the rocks.

Thus far, the leading theory among those who don't wear tinfoil hats and talk to their stuffed animals is tornadoes, but even that's a bit of a stretch.

Personally, I think it's Bigfoot doing a little holiday decorating. I'll bet if you go on Christmas Eve, you'll see all sorts of festive leaf garlands strung on the boulders while the Foot family hoots "Silent Night" and drinks eggnog made from distilled beaver sweat.

Not On The Menu

If you're hankering for a bowl of snake soup in Hong Kong, you may find yourself going hungry.

Back during the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic, snakes were briefly thought to be one of the disease's carriers, so their import from China was banned. Even though the slithery critters have been given a clean bill of health, the Chinese government still hasn't allowed the snakeskin trade to resume. All chefs have are last year's frozen leftovers or lower-quality serpents from southeast Asian sources.

Naturally, the soup is coveted for what are believed to be its aphrodisiac powers.

Why is it always the disgusting dishes, or those concocted from endangered species, that are alleged aphrodisiacs? Why can't a cheeseburger be found to have Viagra-like properties? I smell a rat.

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