Come summer, I move from purgatory to paradise. You can find me on top of the highest mountain on Nagu island, watching the sun go up and down above the sea, while I wrap the scenery around my soul, like bandage.
If there is anything wrong with this isola, it may be:
[1] Ferry queues. I came this close (holding my thumb and index fingers within a micromillimeter from each other) to blowing another gasket in my head last Sunday… and while I am the first to understand why these millions of people make their weekend pilgrimage to Nagu, I am also the first to hate them because they are in my way.
[2] The fishy situation. For the last three to four years, the fishing has decreased radically. Now, the mere thought of a fat whitefish sends me into ecstasy. A small pike-perch is a very distant possibility. A couple of flounders, please - oh, you should try my smoked flounders - but I get one here and one there, never enough. And where did all the bass/perch go? I could get twenty in one net in the past years…
Someone is eating all the fish, and I have found a prime suspect. It is not the farmers who overload the sea with fertilizers, and it is not all those ships that dump waste in the sea (although, rest assured, they’re both on my shitlist).
No, it is The Seal, my sworn enemy. The professional fishermen have complained about them for years, but no one ever listen to - the four or five of - them. This profession is older than Jesus, and about to fade away and quietly die… all due to those tubs of lard that breed like rabbits and eat tons of fish every day.
South of Nagu lies the Skärgårdshavet (Archipelago Sea), a protected national park and the best piece of Finland. Unfortunately, this safe haven is now being manipulated by these carnivorous pinnipeds, multiplying as I write/speak.
My suggestion is not to hire eskimos, but to train the fishermen to become seal hunters, because we really and most definitely need to keep the number low, otherwise the Baltic Sea will soon be empty. Empty, damnit! Can you hear me! Cousteau is rolling in his grave. An empty sea!
But they’re so cute, the animal people in green anoraks will say. And I say, I like to play with my pellet gun. If I catch sight of a baby seal outside my beach, I’ll crack the skull of it to hell.
The reason for my hot temper is this: I had three nets in the sea the night between Friday and Saturday. The catch was rather good, actually. In quantity. Fifteen flappy fishies. But the quality… I present to you the Cottidae species; the Bullhead, or the Fourhorned Sculpin.
I personally know it intimately as the “oh no, not another shit-ugly Simpa!” The Fourhorned Sculpin is probably a tooth-less relative to the crocodile, a lot older than the dinosaurs, and will most likely survive a nuclear blast together with the cuckroaches.
It is so slimy and ugly I just want to puke when I see it. The net always sticks to its horns and warts and pricks and yugh and phyi and ixck. I’d rather give my hand to a barracuda…
The seals are picky gourmands and would never touch them, which is why I got fifteen of these in my nets, and nothing else. Even the seagulls have to have an appetite before they come flying for this very questionable feast…
