Estuary+Fiction

=Estuary Fiction =

//By: Alison Farmer and Clairese Kenyon// ** Hello, my name is Michelangelo; you can call me Mike for short. I am a Grey Mullet. If you didn’t know that’s a type of fish. I live in the Chesapeake Bay Estuary and let me tell you this place is insane.
 * Michelangelo The Mullet

My school is crazy; they don’t feed us all day! So one day I decided to stop at the local greenhouse to scrounge something to eat. There was nothing in the dumpster at the back of the greenhouse, so I wandered inside. One of the plants was completely moldering in dead leaves. I politely asked him if he would mind if I took the leaves to snack on. “ Dude it doesn’t make a difference to me, anyway, take what you want”. Wow! A free snack, and the dwarf eelgrass didn’t care! “ Thanks so much” I profusely thanked him, and I was on my way to school knowing (thankfully) that I wouldn’t starve!

So the day started out beautifully and to tell the truth it ended nicely too, until the swim home. I got as far as the brick cave on the left when the local bully, Luke the Lamprey charged in front of me with neck-breaking speed! He was known for his vampire-like tendencies. I started to shudder and my dorsal fin went numb. Then he came at me and clung onto my side. It felt like a million fishhooks grabbing at my scales. The sensation went away after a while, but I could tell that he was still there, and there he would stay.



I felt a tugging at my side, and my fins couldn’t resist the force. I was slowly but steadily tugged into the brick cave on the left. Finally a figure appeared in front of me. Lola the Loggerhead Sea Turtle Queen. “ Thank you, Luke, put him with the rest for the banquet,” she said. So there I was in a cage with barely enough room to swim. And the stinking lamprey was //still// on my side. There was nothing much to do except watch so I saw the cleaner gobies suddenly appear and start cleaning the barnacles off of Lola’s shell. “ Make sure it’s extra clean today, I want to look good for the feast,” Lola said. “ All the more for us, mistress” the gobies replied.

Suddenly the freshly cleaned creature appeared in front of me. “ I’m craving mullet today,” Lola said “ Give me that one,” She was pointing to me, and I knew I was a goner.

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