A flying fish story

Flying fish were a common sight when my Navy ship was in the South China Sea. The fish don’t fly so much as glide:  They propel themselves out of the water to escape predators, spread wing-like dorsal fins and glide a few feet above the water for as much as 100 yards or so. Since our ship probably looked like a predator, we often saw flying fish pop out of the water near the ship and take flight.

Since the main deck of our tiny minesweeper was only about six feet above the water, flying fish would land on the deck occasionally. Late one night one of the engine-room guys was sleeping on the deck (a cooler spot than his bunk) when a flying fish joined him. He subdued it and walked into the mess deck carrying the dead fish.

On the mess deck he encountered the ship’s hospital corpsman. What are you doing with that fish? I dunno, maybe the cook can do something with it. The Doc had a better idea: They tiptoed into the berthing compartment and slipped the fish into the cook’s bunk.

The cook woke up with the dead fish in his bunk, immediately blamed the mess cook and transferred the fish to the mess cook’s bunk. The mess cook blamed someone else, and so on. During the night the fish visited about half the bunks in the berthing compartment.

Years later the tale of the flying fish became a bedtime story for my kids with the refrain: WHO put the flying fish in MY bed?

 

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