The Salmon Story

Once upon a time, there lived a happy salmon who wished he was a bird. He longed for this more than anything he’d ever wanted before in his pitifully short life. Suddenly one day, as he was leaping happily over rocks in his stream, he happened upon a duck. Now, it’s odd enough to encounter a duck in a burbling stream in any case, but this duck was particularly disturbing in that in his beak he held a pair of Victoria’s Secret  thongs. To make the matter stranger, he was sporting a light blue corset and fishnets. The salmon was extremely puzzled and asked him if he could please borrow a pair ( a pair of thongs? Or of fishnets? It didn’t matter, a pair of anything would do.) The logic going through the salmon’s fishy head was that perhaps to dress like a bird would be the first step on the road to really becoming one. Upon hearing this request, the duck spat the thongs out of his mouth, looked down his long bill at the salmon and said, “My dear fish, to wear thongs and fishnets, one must have a pair of legs, or at least one leg.” 1

That thought had never before struck the salmon. He was mildly set back at the revelation, but the kindly transvestite took pity.2

“Salmon, I think I might be able to help you. Yes, in just seven days, I can make you a bird!”3

The salmon was elated at this prospect, and asked the duck how to begin.4

“Dear, dear fish, to begin we must first work on building up some muscles underneath those scales. You’ll do pushups and chin-ups…for your chest , arms, and…hmm hmmhmm…legs.”5

“Arms? Legs?” replied the salmon hopefully. “you mean…?”6

“Oh, absolutely. You’ve got fins, haven’t you? You adverse to some hard work?”7

“No, not at all!” The salmon began beating his fins in aquatic pushups, hopeful that millions of years of evolution would be sped up by his efforts. 8

The transsexual duck worked each day with the salmon, and, sure enough, after a couple days the fruits of their efforts were beginning to show. 9

“Now,” said the duck on the third day, “we will begin work on evolving those gills of yours.”10

Again, the salmon threw himself into the exercises prescribed by the corseted water-fowl. Soon, it was obvious that, exercise as he might, he just couldn’t make himself grow lungs. Poor bastard, he tried over and over. Every hour or so, he would jump out of the water and try to suck in a big gulp of air just to see if he could do it yet, but every time he found himself suffocating and had to return to the water post-haste. 11

On the sixth day, a miracle occurred: the salmon was able to walk about on his new legs, breathe the air, and, best of all, wear corsets, thongs, and fishnets. To his great disappointment, he realized that he was not a bird. After great debate and discussion, the duck convinced the salmon that this body was as close to a bird-body  as he would ever reach. The salmon, happy to no longer be a fish, called himself “human”. On the promised seventh day, they rested. And that’s how humans came to be. Eventually, the human grew tired of being the only human (even though he could talk to the animals and spent every weekend in drag with the duck), but that’s another story.     12