My collaborator in crime, Mme. Scarlotta, pun mistress extraordinaire, is back. Having finished her Ph.D. and other salmon obligations, we now can benefit from the following.

If you love salmon the way I do, raw (Sushi), lox (smoked), poached, grilled, barbecued, in salads, then you might be interested in how salmon spawn. As you may know, they swim upstream. In fact, before they became threatened as a species, one could go salmon fishing during the salmon runs. My dad used to do that every year and we were the happy beneficiaries of the ease with which he could catch them. Well, that vulnerability turned out to be an error in calclation on the part of the salmon. You see, once upon a time, salmon used to only swim upstream during night hours. At night, they could not be seen as well. However, one particularly observant salmon noticed that most creatures, including the fishes’ greatest enemies, fisher birds, slept at night and hunted during the day. So, the Salmon Council was drawn together and this particularly observant fish presented his observations. It was decided, on the basis of this very persuasive argument, to call a vote to decide whether the salmon should rest during the day, as they always had, or rest at night. You can guess what happened. When the presiding fish asked, “When should we rest?”, salmon chanted, “evening.”