A big fish tale

Recent phone conversation between Harry and Linda:

"Linda, I caught a big fish."

"That's nice dear. How big?"

"Big."

"Bigger than Bubba?"

"Yeah. Bigger than Bubba."

(Bubba is a large mouth bass he caught in Maine several years ago and Harry had him mounted. Bubba now graces a wall in Harry's office/trophy room.)

"It's a brown trout, 27 and inches long. It weighs six and a half pounds."

Wow! Even I knew that was big.

"Did you throw him back?"

"Are you nuts? I'm keeping it. Who would believe me if I didn't have the proof?"

Well, there are these things called cameras and photographs but I smelled a fishy ulterior motive.

When I finally got to see the fish, I was duly impressed. He really was a big one!

"So, are you going to have him mounted?"

"Nah. It's too expensive."

As Harry showed him to more and more people, everyone asked the same question: "Are you going to have him mounted?"

By the end of the day it was decided … Big Bubba would become immortalized and enshrined upon another wall in Harry's office/trophy room.

That night, Harry cleared a space in the chest freezer for Big Bubba until arrangements could be made with a taxidermist.

About a week and a half later, Harry had two friends come by to help him move his gun safe into his newly remodeled office/trophy room.

That night I went into the guest bathroom where an offensive odor assailed my nose.

"Whew! Did any of the two guys that were here today use the bathroom?"

Harry thought for a moment then said, "No. Why?"

I told him my nose detected a stench. He came into the bathroom and sniffed too.

"Yeah. That's odd. They've been gone hours ago."

The next day I needed something from the basement. As soon as I opened the door, a malodorous smell accosted my senses.

"What the heck? Man, I hope that isn't something fishy," I thought fearfully.

I followed the stench.

No, it wasn't Big Bubba. Instead, it was part of Big Bambi.

When Harry was rooting around in the freezer to make room for Big Bubba, he had taken out a basket and put it on a chair. Inside the basket was a whole pack of deer burgers. All thawed out. Left out of the freezer since the night Big Bubba arrived. Blood had seeped out all over the chair and dripped on the floor, leaving a horrendously thick pile of dried blood and overpowering stink.

All of this was directly beneath the guest bathroom where there is a hole in the closet floor for dirty laundry to fall in a hamper below.

That's why there was such a smell in the bathroom.

Mystery solved. Rotten meat thrown out. Mess cleaned up.

Big Bubba is now in the hands of the taxidermist. It will probably be at least nine months before Harry sees him again.

Almost like a pregnancy and Harry is the expectant father. It'll be like giving birth to it twice … once when he caught it and then when he gets to bring his bundle of joy home for good.

Ahhh, fatherhood.

You know how like when you are a parent and you have more than one child, you always like to make sure you treat them equally?

I'm thinking since Papa Koehler is going to spend big bucks on Big Bubba, he should spend an equal amount on his Big Mama.

Seems only fair to me. So I think I see a long weekend to Plymouth, Massachusetts, and a lobster dinner in my near future.

I like that ending to this fish tale.