The Hairy Catfish Caper

Patrick had an easy smile and a winning way about him. He was easy to like. But his Achilles heel was his gullibility. Not that being gullible is a bad thing. As a matter of fact, it can often be an endearing quality.

However, for a pair of pranksters like Jim and me, taking advantage of a gullible person is something we simply could not resist. The summer that Patrick began working with us, little did he know what he was getting himself into.

One morning, he entered our office with his usual broad smile.

“Have you all ever seen someone feed their pond-raised catfish?” he asked, his eyes dancing with excitement. “I was at Glen’s this weekend and he took me out with him when he fed his fish. It was amazing! The way they come to the surface and gobble up the feed they look like piranha!”

Jim and I concurred with Patrick’s description, having seen the same display in the past.

Then, without a change in expression or tone, Jim asked Patrick, “Did you see any hairy catfish?”

I cut a quick glance at Jim and saw a tiny twinkle in his eye.

Patrick, on the other hand, was befuddled. “A what?”

Jim calmly went on, “Hairy catfish. They’re unusual but occasionally you’ll see them around here.”

Patrick tried to treat Jim’s comment as a bluff. “You’re crazy! I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

But you could see in the back of Patrick’s eyes the doubt that came from being gullible. So, he turned to me to help get some confirmation of his position.

Clearly, he turned to the wrong place.

Not knowing for certain what direction Jim was going to spin his yarn, I decided to give it my own twist.

“Jim’s right. They’re more common the closer you get to the Mississippi River, but I’ve seen some around here.”

Patrick protested, “My dad and his friends are always fishing and I’ve never heard them talk about hairy catfish. You guys are just pulling my leg.”

Jim dismissed Patrick’s protests with a casual, “You can believe what you want.”

Nothing more was said about the issue in the ensuing days, though Jim and I shared an occasional chuckle about Patrick’s almost believing us.

Three weeks later, Patrick came in and announced, “I went home this weekend and talked to my dad about hairy catfish, and he says there ain’t no such thing.”

I couldn’t help but think what his dad must have thought about his son who considered hairy catfish a real thing.

The key to a good practical joke is stringing the person along the narrow line between plausible and impossible.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to see how far we could take this thing.

“I’m not surprised Patrick,” I said. “Has your dad ever fished any ponds or lakes close to the Mississippi?”

Ah, there was the faint flicker of doubt in Patrick’s expression that I was looking for. He couldn’t help himself either.

Jim chimed in, “It’s not like they’re hairy all over like a dog. They just have a little hair. So sometimes people don’t see it.”

Patrick tried to appear resolved. “I just don’t believe it.”

But it was clear to Jim and me that our young apprentice was on shifting sand.

A few days later, Jim and I were fishing. Suddenly I get a tug on my line. Raising it up, a small catfish about twelve inches long danced and wiggled on my hook.

Normally we’d throw a fish that size back in the water, but as soon as we saw it, we looked at each other and said, “There’s our hairy catfish.”

Another thing about a good practical joke is that it takes on a life of its own. Neither Jim nor I had ever talked about “making” a hairy catfish. We hadn’t intended to take things that far. But when the perfect specimen virtually dropped in our lap, we decide to take things to another level.

I agreed to take the fish home and freeze it whole until we could figure out how to create our “hairy catfish.”

As the alignment of the planets would have it, the ideal prosthesis presented itself the next week.

Jim’s attic had become infested with a family of flying squirrels. Those creatures are small and cute and don’t mind being around humans, which is fine until 3 a.m. when they start doing calisthenics and creating more noise than a marching band.

To save his marriage and his sanity, Jim declared war on the critters.

(At this point in the story PETA people should probably stop reading.)

Jim placed traps and poison in the attic, and his efforts were immediately rewarded.

He came in one morning and handed me the tail of a flying squirrel and said, “This is for our hairy catfish.”

In case you aren’t familiar with the anatomy of a flying squirrel, let me enlighten you. Its tail is about three inches long and when laid flat actually resembles a feather.

We heard Patrick driving up so I quickly stuck the tail in my pocket, still unsure how I was going to use it.

That night, I took the catfish out of the freezer to thaw by morning but forgot to tell my wife I had laid it in the sink. Her shriek from the kitchen the next morning got me out of bed quicker than a cattle prod.

After she left the kitchen (her color looked a little ashen to me), I laid the fish on some newspaper on the kitchen counter. Measuring the squirrel’s tail, I saw it was a perfect fit, running from just above the eyes to the dorsal fin.

How to get it to stick — that was my challenge. Catfish are as slick and slimy as the upper lip of a two-year-old with a runny nose.

I got my wife’s hair dryer, laid it beside the fish, and scrounged through our “junk drawer” until I found the hot glue gun.

As my wife was heading out the door to take the girls to school, the high pitch whine of her hair dryer coming from the kitchen caused her to pause. She peered into the kitchen and saw me slowly waving her hair dryer back and forth over the catfish.

She opened her mouth to speak, but I held up my hand.

“Just keep on walking,” I said.

I was on a mission!

Once the fish was dry to the touch, I put a bead of hot glue from his dorsal fin to his head and carefully put the squirrel tail in place and patted it gently.

The moment of truth came a moment later when I tried to pick up the catfish by the hair.

It worked perfectly! Burt Reynolds never had a better fitting toupee.

... The Hair Catfish Caper will conclude in next week’s edition.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume I1: The Hairy Catfish Caper.