TO CONTINUE WITH THE FISH TALE

All right, it's a bit of a whopper but it's also entirely true. Yesterday for reasons unbeknownst to anyone, including yours truly, I was offered a chance to write news articles for Helium. It's not like I haven't done a couple of straight news stories for them before, but never with all the strictures they put on, or offer, their actual news reporters and journalists - so I thought - well, why not give this a shot.

At first I thought I should write something hard-hitting and poignant. I was going to cover the five deaths that recently happened in Afghanistan - four soldiers and one journalist - after all, two of the boys were buried in Sherwood Park just yesterday and the journalist was from Calgary.

Then I got thinking about it and figured that maybe, sad as it is to say, that's old news. And Helium makes it pretty clear that they want timely news.

So I started perusing the Journal and after only a minute or so I came upon this story about these monstrous carp from Asia that have almost taken over the American river systems and lakes and are attempting to cross the border and invade the Great Lakes. A group called the Great Lakes Alliance has appealed to the US Supreme Court to seal the locks between the Great Lakes and Chicago canals - the only thing that stands between the lakes and the Mississippi River Basin, and they want the Army to move in and enforce this.

Naturally there is a great hue and cry from the shipping industry to keep this from happening.  Illinois state is saying the story is greatly exaggerated but from the little bit of research I did - from YouTube to Wikepedia to the Journal Story out of New York itself, I don't think so. I think the fresh waterways in the Great Lakes,t plus all points north of there, are in real peril.

To top it all off, I've had first hand experience with one of these monsters and actually have a pretty decent photo. Whether they choose to use my picture or not remains to be seen.

It's that blamed carp that I saw out at the Devonian Gardens when I last walked there with the UU's. I don't know if I wrote about it leaping out of the water at me while I was on the bridge just about scaring the crap out of me. That leap, its size and its appearance pretty well convinced me that this carp and the ones everyone is all upset about are one and the same!

How lucky is that? So, yeah, even though I had a good deal of trouble trying to figure out how to post a photo to this particular part of Helium, once I got it up, I think it added to the piece (I hope so anyhow!)

Now I have to wait to see if the piece gets approved.

I'm also going to try and become an Examiner reporter. The reason? I half-filled out their application and sort of forgot about it and they've contacted me to see if I wouldn't like to complete my application and come work for them...this may just be routine but maybe not. Wouldn't that be something?

And away we go...