From Harper’s Weekly Review:<\/p>\n
A pig in New Jersey named Albert Einswine led cops on a 30-minute foot chase, and a kangaroo in Canada escaped while being transferred between zoos, hopped down a highway, evaded authorities for four days, and then punched an officer in the face.<\/em><\/p>\n \u2248<\/p>\n The BIG goldfish news came from the Times. Actually, it is GIANT goldfish news.<\/a> While you might believe any news about goldfish has to be good, this news is not good: the massive goldfish in question are dominating life forms in Lake Ontario, i.e., killing off and\/or eating everything in sight.<\/p>\n I have a bit of experience with goldfish. Until I was eight, my family (including me) lived in the Bronx at a Grand Concourse walk-up complex called Thomas Gardens Apartments.* The “garden” wasn’t euphemistic: the complex had a large, landscaped interior courtyard, at the center of which were crossed arched bridges over a goldfish pond.<\/p>\n Since everyone had to walk through the courtyard to get to his\/her apartment, the goldfish pond was daily territory for exploration. I have firm memories of standing on the bridge and gazing over the railing at the fish below. They were “goldfish” only in a generic sense; the pond was home to a great variety of colors displayed by those fish. Red, gold, white, black and whatever else. (The black one was my fave.) They were larger than fish-bowl size because, as I learned, goldfish expand in correlation with the size of their environment. But since those goldfish lived in a pond not quite as big as Lake Ontario, they never became as huge as the fish now crowding the lake.<\/p>\n Goldfish are, in fact, carp. I did not make the connection between the 840 Grand Concourse goldfish and the smoked carp my mom offered as a Sunday breakfast, along with the de rigueur<\/em> lox and bagels. But, as I now consider this, I realize I don’t buy smoked carp, and never have.<\/p>\n The final goldfish experience was my brother’s. He does not now recall any reason why he had goldfish; that is, he had made no outcry for them. (My sister’s eternal outcry was for a dog; now she has two.) Nevertheless, my brother had two goldfish. He named them Thomas and Edison. Thomas died first; Mom gave him a funeral via a toilet flush. I don’t remember what happened with Edison but most likely not immortality.<\/p>\n I’m really glad I called my brother to fact check those goldfish because I was about to tell you what happened to one of them. Except it wasn’t to a goldfish. It was to my brother’s turtle. When the turtle died, my brother (at age maybe seven) wrote in memoriam:<\/p>\n I had a little turtle, his name was Tootsie Shor. He makes our garden fertile because he is no more.<\/em><\/p>\n *When I consulted my AIA Guide to New York (an utterly marvelous, often hilariously sarcastic book) for info on Thomas Gardens, I found they were financed by John D. Rockefeller as part of his plan to build affordable housing for poor people. I never knew we were poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Harper’s Weekly Review: A pig in New Jersey named Albert Einswine led cops on a 30-minute foot chase, and a kangaroo in Canada escaped while being transferred between zoos, hopped down a highway, evaded authorities for four days, and … Continue reading