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    Bearfish
    Bearfish
    Bearfish
    Ebook51 pages26 minutes

    Bearfish

    By John O'Brien

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    About this ebook

    In January 1911, President Taft signed The Useful Animals Appropriation Act, and within months, the first hippopotomi arrived on the Calcasieu River.

    In real life, none of this happened. But in Bearfish, John O'Brien offers a deep, amusing and often moving picture of an America forever altered by the introduction of one fateful animal that Americans chose to call the bearfish.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSea Lion Press
    Release dateJul 15, 2017
    ISBN9781386110095
    Bearfish
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      Book preview

      Bearfish - John O'Brien

      This is a work of fiction. While ‘real-world’ characters may appear, the nature of the divergent story means any depictions herein are fictionalised and in no way an indication of real events. Above all, characterisations have been developed with the primary aim of telling a compelling story.

      Published by Sea Lion Press, 2017. All rights reserved.

      For Kay

      In the first days of 1911, President Taft signed a bill into law with a halfhearted scrawl. He scarcely remembered the actual signatory ceremony, remarking in his biography that, all of Mexico was on fire, the Chinese were rising up against American trade, and all anyone wanted me to do was worry about the meat in New Orleans, well, damn New Orleans.

      How unfortunate for Taft that some fifty years later his rushed signature might be his most memorable achievement. For although very few people blame Taft for the current state of American foreign affairs, they can all point directly to the January 3, 1911, signing of The Useful Animals Appropriation Act, hereafter known as the Hippo Laws, as his most concrete impact on the daily life of millions of Americans.

      Afrikaner rangers, on loan from the British Empire, introduced the first of the useful animals, along the Calcasieu River in Vernon Parish, Louisiana in mid-1911. Great fanfare followed the event. People across the United States heralded the mass release of formerly extinct, or as in the case of the hippopotamus – never extant, animals to the North American continent as the next great step in a national project started with the foundation of Yellowstone on March 1, 1872. We are a bountiful nation, wrote the editor of The Times-Picayune, because we are a republic of conservationists. The introduction of hippopotamuses to the northern bend of that little river in western Louisiana signified so much more than cheap meat for Gulf Coast markets, it touched off a reshaping of the Western hemisphere.

      By now it may seem normal for great herds of camels to roam from Manitoba to central Mexico, for sportsmen to head out into the chaparral in search of the elusive California Rhinoceros, or to hear tales of elephant bound loggers reshaping the great Amazon forests of Brazil; but it was not always this way. While each of these animals: the camel, the rhinoceros, and the elephant, along with others, serves as a sort of regional totem, none so drastically impacted their region nor so totally came to symbolize a particular aspect of this new American culture as the hippopotamus.

      Thus, the hippopotamus and its long-term impact on the southeastern United States must serve as the first locus of study. I sat out several years ago to find the greatest movers and thinkers of the cultural and economic revolutions associated with the most useful animals of all, and through their hard-earned expertise attempt to understand the associated transformations. That being said, this is an ongoing oral history project, that hopefully someday will involve universities, history, and agriculture departments across the nation. For right now though it is only history, the bearfish, and me.

      Alice Young

      Temple University Press

      Philadelphia, PA

      1969

      YOUNG: Hello, this is Alice Young. It is January 3, 1962, in Lincoln, Alabama. We're here talking to Hiram Lee. Mr. Lee, if you could introduce yourself so people know what your voice sounds like.

      LEE: Do I, do I just talk?

      YOUNG: Yes.

      LEE: My name is Hiram Lee and I worked at the Alabama Polytechnic School for 34 years. In 1922, I became the first professor of Amphibious Livestock Maintenance and I did that until I retired about six years ago.

      YOUNG: And when you say Alabama Polytechnic, you mean Auburn University?

      LEE: Yes. They renamed it a few years ago but

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