…but some catfish are more evil than others and yesterday, the beloved found out just how evil they can be. We’d hired a tinny from Brooklyn to do a spot of fishing on the Hawkesbury River (a last-ditch attempt to make the most of our quickly dissolving holidays). It was a humid but lovely day and a light cloud cover kept the worst of the burning sun at bay. We hadn’t actually caught a great deal – two small bream that we’d put back. I’d had an enormous bite that had broken the line at the swivel and was beating myself up a bit about it…there’s nothing worse than losing a good fish because of the fisherman’s ineptitude with tackle. Overall, a very pleasant morning. I just love messing about in boats and my morning reverie, as I was vaguely attempting to untangle a knot from a line, was broken by the beloved showing off his latest catch – a large striped catfish.
I loathe catfish. The very sight of the slimy, squirming, whiskery golems of the deep fills me with dread. And until yesterday, I had no real reason to be so horrified. But, judging by subsequent events, my reaction would seem to be based on some sort of primordial intuition. Mike, however, did not share my revulsion and was all but ready to grab the thing to dehook and send it back from whence it came.
“Don’t touch it – use a cloth,” I said and began a mad scramble in the bottom of the boat for the cloth I knew I brought along for just such an event. Of course, I couldn’t find it so threw him a Chux instead.
Note to fisherman: Chux don’t protect you from fish spines. Not even Chux of the super duper, extra thick, heavy duty variety. The evil thing flipped about, stabbing the spine on its pectoral fin straight through the flimsy protection and into Mike’s hand – not once, but twice – into his index finger and the webbing of his palm.
Chaos. Did you know catfish are venomous? Slightly less venomous than Stonefish and Scorpionfish, as it turns out, but the emphasis is on slightly. Ok, I am exaggerating. Stonefish will kill you. So the smarmy, venomous fish is flapping about the boat, there’s blood everywhere, the poison is working its way through Mikey’s body and the man with a pain threshold like an elephant (do elephant’s have a high pain threshold?) is writhing around in misery. Mind you, he’s understating things somewhat, even at this point. If it were me, I’d have been screaming. The entire Hawkesbury would have known what had happened. Mike just sat there and said “Ooh, that really hurts. My finger’s gone numb,” and then proceeded to tell me to get the hook out of the fish. Which, naturally, I was reticient to do. When he suggested I get the camera out and take a photo of the fish in case he became unconscious, however, I figured it was dire.
You know, the funniest thing about the whole situation was the pictures I took ended up looking like the rest of our fishing ‘brag’ photos. “Look at the fish I just caught!
It almost killed me!”
Note the bloody drops, tissues and ice brick. Anyway, I cut the thing off and it sunk back to its watery lair, we got the beloved cleaned up and I gave him an ice brick to put on it. He didn’t like the ice but after a while things calmed down. I figured that if catfish were deadly I would have heard about it so, would you believe, we continued fishing! Mike even managed to haul in a very nice flathead!
Once we were on dry land, however, Mike began to feel bad. By now, his hand was a swollen, angry red balloon, hot to touch. He was light headed and sweating and the pain was becoming worse. He suggested, of his own accord, that we go to the doctor and I became progressively more worried. I could tell it was really bad when he asked me to drive, because he never does that. So we made for the Brooklyn Community Centre clinic. As soon as they heard Mike had been stabbed by a catfish they organised somebody to see us almost straight away, prescribed antibiotics and a tetanus injection (which also includes diphtheria and whooping cough these days). But as for pain, it was over-the-counter medication only. I had a feeling that wasn’t going to cut it, but it was all we could do.
So we continued up the road to my aunt’s place (she was a nurse…she’ll know what to do…and she may also have drugs). And it wasn’t until this point that I thought, “I know, I’ll look it up on Google”.
Out of all the technology I own and use, the thing that tickles me the most is being able to access the internet from my mobile phone. Mike teases me mercilessly about it. He calls me his ‘little geek girl’, which isn’t true because, while I like using technology, I’m hardly a geek. Geeks hate Facebook and I quite like it, for example. Ok – I’m addicted to it. But he has had to eat humble pie in any case because thanks to my so-called geekgirliness, I discovered this site, which details treatments for marine stings, among them catfish. And it turns out the correct treatment is not ice, but hot water (ice actually makes it hurt more…and I’d made him use that ice brick and stick his finger in front of the car’s air conditioning vent)! The only consolation was that the doctors didn’t know either. Codeine did nada but hot water is a miracle painkiller – 45 degrees Celsius – for a max of 90 minutes. Today his finger is still swollen and a little sore, but the agony has dissipated – yay!
“That’s the most useful your geekness has ever been, I think.”
Moral of the story: catfish are evil and geek tendencies are to be encouraged.
