CHAPTER XXXI 

 SEftOR ALCATRAZ AND THE CATFISH 



HE boy is not the only creature which has dubi- 

 ous experiences in fishing for catfish. When the 

 catfish was first introduced from the Potomac 

 into the Sacramento, it went hard with the kind 

 of rock-bass we call the Sacramento perch. The perch fed 

 on the little catfish, which spread out its fins, set its spines 

 and killed the fish which was digesting it. And in some 

 very little catfishes called the mad-tom and the stone cat, 

 found in the streams of the middle west, these spines are 

 reinforced by poison sacs which make the little fishes as 

 venomous as wasps and as unfit for food as cactus or 

 dynamite. 



And this is the story of the experience a large sea bird 

 once had with a Mexican catfish: 



He was just a bird when he was born, and a very ugly 

 bird at that. For he had big splay-feet with all the toes 

 turned forward and joined together in one broad web, and 

 his wings were thick and clumsy, and underneath his long 

 bill there was a big red sack that he could fill with fishes, 

 and when it was full he could hardly walk or fly, so large 

 was the sack and so great was his appetite. 



But he kept the sack well filled, and he emptied it out 

 every day into his stomach, and so he grew very soon to be 

 a large bird, as big as a turkey, though not as fat, and each 

 day uglier than ever. 



But one morning as he was walking out on the sandflat 

 of the Astillero at Mazatlan, Mexico, where he lived, he 



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