A Fish Out Of Water

Mr Pisces, the fish shop owner, was having a terrible day. Nothing seemed to be going right.

His dog fish kept chasing his cat fish. His electric eel had blown a fuse. His gold fish wouldn’t glitter and his star fish wouldn’t shine. His jelly fishes refused to wobble. His sword fish needed sharpening. His sea horses were stampeding. His squid had run out of ink and his flying fish had all gone south for the winter.

“I’ve had enough of fish”, he said, losing his temper, his face turning lobster red, “I’ve had it up to here with herring and I’m sick to death of salmon”.

Poor Mr Pisces had never wanted to be a fish shop keeper in the first place. What he had really always dreamed of being was a lion tamer in the circus. “Leo – the lion tamer” was the stage name he had chosen and he’d practiced every day with a kitchen chair and his neighbours cat but then he’d discovered that he had an incurable fear of large, ferocious animals and so he’d opened a fish shop instead and now the closest which he ever came to taming lions was teaching his sea lion, Lionel, to balance a ball on the end of its nose.

This time, however, Mr Pisces was determined to leave his job and enter a more exciting and dangerous career.

“No more crocodiles with toothache. No more clams with claustrophobia. No more sea-weed salad sandwiches and fish-food pie”, he said, “I quit” and, packing his suitcase with shell-suits and kipper ties, he said goodbye.

All the fish were terribly sad to see him leave. They cried so much that all their tanks overflowed. His octopus hugged him four times at once and the giant blue whale sang a sad lament in its deepest baritone but Mr Pisces was determined to go.

Weeks passed and Mr Pisces tried out every occupation he could think of- from an ambulance driver to a zoologist- anything, he thought, must be better than the drudgery of working in a stinky, old fish shop.

First he tried fire eating. He ate lots of fire. Fire and chips, fire on toast, even fire ice-cream, which always melted before he could get it in his mouth, but eventually he got sick of eating fire and found that it gave him terrible indigestion.

Next he tried snake charming but snakes didn’t find him charming at all, no matter how he flattered them or tried to amuse them with his fish impersonations. They just found him irritating, all except one overly amorous Boa-constrictor who wanted him to marry her and move to Africa.

After that, he tried Pigeon racing but no matter how hard he flapped his arms he knew that he could never fly as fast as a pigeon, even on roller skates.

Finally, he tried Sky diving and bought all the equipment; the snorkel, the flippers and the frogman outfit. But, when he turned up for his interview they just laughed at him and refused to let him on the aeroplane.

In the end, the only work which Mr Pisces was suitable for was as a tax collector and, though this was quite a dangerous job, because nobody likes tax collectors, taxes weren’t any fun to collect like stamps or old coins.

“Oh Halibut!”, he sighed to himself, fed up with faliure, “I can’t do anything right. I might aswell just throw myself in the river!”, he thought and he was standing on the river bank, moping, when he heard a little voice shout from beneath the water.

“Nobody try and stop me!”, it said, “I’m going to jump!”.

Then, suddenly, Mr Pisces saw a tiny, silver fish leap from the river onto the river bank.

Well, as you probably know, fish cannot breathe outside of water and so, afraid for the poor fishes life, Mr Pisces grabbed the fish by its tail and threw it back in the river.

“What did you do that for?”, it shouted at him, angrily, “I was going to end it all. My life isn’t worth living anyway!”.

“Oh, it can’t be as bad as all that”, said Mr Pisces, trying to cheer the fish up.

The fish put its head in its fins and little tears welled up in its big fishy eyes as it started to cry.

“My fish wife Flo’ has gone. Taken away by a nasty great hook”, it sobbed, “I told her that that worm looked suspicious but she wouldn’t listen. Now my friends all tell me, 'there are plenty more fish in the sea' but no one could ever take the place of my Flo”.

Listening to the fishes sad story. Mr Pisces remembered all his poor aquatic friends which he had left behind in his fish shop.

“Oh. How could I have been so selfish!”, he said.

“Shell-fish?”, asked the fish, “Where?”.

“Not Shellfish”, he answered, “Selfish. I left a wonderful job in a fish shop just to chase my silly dreams and I left all my unfortunate fish to fend for themselves!”.

Suddenly, just like water spouting out of a whale, Mr Pisces had a wonderfully brilliant idea, “There are lots of pretty lady fishes in my fish shop”, he said to the little fish, “Maybe you could find a companion there”.

But the little fish wasn’t sure. It said that its heart was broken and, just to demonstrate how broken its heart was, it shook and Mr Pisces heard the pieces rattle.

So Mr Pisces described all the lady fish in his shop; the glamorous, frilly, multi-colored anemones; the clinging affectionate barnacles; the elegant, slender flat fish and the shy, retiring sea-snails.

“They all sound so wonderful”, said the fish, drying its tears on a fin, “Maybe, I should come to your shop”.

So, Mr Pisces, taking off his bowler hat, scooped the little fish out of the river and took it home to his shop.

When Mr Pisces returned to his shop, he was relieved to see that all of the fish had managed to run it without him. The dolphins had done all the organizing because they were the cleverest. The Mussels had done all the heavy lifting and the octopus had handled the customers, serving eight at a time but they were all overjoyed to see him and welcomed him back with open fins, flippers, claws and tentacles.