I think its true!

[Topcat02]

This was a pretty interesting story from The Sunday Wichita Eagle Newspaper a couple of weeks ago. A resident in the area saw a ball bouncing around kind of strange in a nearby pond and went to investigate. It turned out to be a flathead catfish who had obviously tried to swallow a child's basketball which became stuck in its mouth!!
The fish was totally exhausted from trying to dive, but unable to because the ball would always bring him back up to the surface. The resident tried numerous times to get the ball out, but was unsuccessful. He finally had his wife cut the ball in order to deflate it and release the hungry catfish.
You probably wouldn't have believed this, if you hadn't seen the following pictures...


Any recipes for catfish. I wonder if Ray Mears has tried this novel approach to fishing!

 

[JonnyP]

Love it................Jon

 

[bloodline]

fantestical keep em coming

 

[Friar Tuck]

There is a local wildlife pond near us and the rangers kept wondering what was happening to the young swans and ducks . They thought it could be foxes or wild cats or mink until one day they saw a massive mouth suck down a young Mallard chick and saw the big tail of a catfish.
All that was left was a few feathers floating on the surface. :yikes:
A local angling club was tasked to catch and remove it.
Johnny F

 

[pierre girard]

Every year we watch the Candian geese. Mother will swim by the first day with a dozen goslings. Next day there will be nine. Next day six - etc. She is lucky to get one gosling to the flying stage. Big northern pike take some - eagles take the others.

PG

 

[Spacemonkey]

Near my gaff in Spain, the Ebro is full of 2.5 metre catfish. A couple of years ago an English couple were in a boat on the river and let their Yorkshire Terrier go for a swim. It disappeared in a mouthful of catfish...

 

[Stuart]

interesting find topcat

Pigeons run into similar problems will maltesers.

 

[Topcat02]

How on earth did you find that out?

 

[Stuart]

I was sitting in a park one day and near by someone had obviously dropped an open packet of maltesers because they were scatted about the path.

I witnessed a group of pigeons attempt to eat the aforementioned maltesers and whilst they managed to get them into there open beaks they could not swallow them and they became lodged part way into there gullet.

after a few minutes there were several pigeons frantically strutting around in circles gagging with half a malteser protruding from their open beak.

due to this they seems unable or at least disinclined to fly and in their distracted state could probably be easily captured one were so inclined as to try

all of them did after 15-20 minutes or so and with great effort succeed in ejecting the malteser (though some of them were stupid enough to make a second attempt)

this probably only happens to urban pigeons though who are accustomed to eating all kinds of rubbish