One of these fish is not like the other...

In one of my earliest blogs, I introduced you to a fish named "Brokeback", so-named because of his handicap, not his sexual preference. I have adopted him as a pet of sorts, and feeding him used to entertain me before I recently became bored with it. One of my friends here, an Iraqi American, long ago adopted different fishy as his favorite pet. Her name is Goldie, and my friend dutifully feeds her every day.

Goldie is the only goldfish-type fish in the lake, as far as we know, so she is easily spotted amongst the zillions of, well, doo-doo-brownish fish. It seems, by the way, that there has been a sudden explosion in the fish population begging near the palace entrance. They are breeding like rabbits, and they must double in size every week. I swear, some of them are so big they look like sharks. I would love to go for a swim, but I have to admit I am deathly afraid of the fish. I am fairly certain they would eat pretty much anything you throw to them, including Nachos, loaves of bread, toddlers, or the dismembered body parts of Saddam's enemies. I'm not taking my chances.

Today, I watched some soldiers playing fish football. This favorite lunchtime game involves tossing a roll or a large chunk of bread to the fish and rooting for them to keep the bread afloat for as long as possible while they push it across the surface in an attempt to wrap their sucking fish lips around it. The bigger and smoother the loaf, the better, because they can't bite it, and they push it until the water soaks it too much and it breaks the surface tension and is gobbled up in a matteer of nanoseconds. You can hear their fish lips making a very loud suck noise as they open and close their greedy mouths. With the increase in the fish population and the size of the fish, the game is becoming very rough. It looked like a feeding frenzy scene out of The Deep.