I was once a fish, but then I went to war. Terrible things happened over there, horrors you wouldn’t even believe. I watched my brothers die. I observed your great uncle performing fellatio on a cob of corn, not yet ripe. I saw the face of god and it was ugly. Nevertheless, I returned from the carnage a man. Hairy legs, meaty hands, and all. A humanoid with the impulses of a great Cyclopterus lumpus, wishing to drown myself in unapproved quantities of Oxytetracycline. No longer innocent. No longer fluvial. And no longer willing to vacillate on frivolous territorial spats like my forefathers.
What do I mean, you ask? I mean that if we were ever to be neighbors whose homes bordered on the same country pond, I would not share fishing rights. I would sooner engulf and masticate you whole than divide legal claims to the gill-bearing aquatic craniate population. My teeth would eat your teeth. My fleshy fingers would rip you into tiny, bite-sized filets. I have killed many men and would do it again. I may look like a hunky man to you, but I know what it is to be a fish, they are my comrades. I will not allow you or your fisherwife to bait and hook my comrades. This is the first rule of war according to Sun Tzu, a great ally of the Zhou Dynasty crustaceans.
Know that if you try to fish on my pond, I will either eat you or feed you to my favorite fish, a fat trout named George who smokes cigarettes. I have sewn several smart top hats for George but he does not wear them except for on Easter. Though I am no longer a fish, I still possess two eyes and am mildly ectothermic, hence the incubator I sleep in next to my pond. It is important for you to know this should a dispute over fishing rights ever arise. You may not even approach my pond unless it is to supplicate and exalt before the Mother Fish, who is many-scaled and does not care for your prayers.
