The Fish Revolution by R.M.C. (reading comprehension books txt) 📕

Titicaca Lake - Andes plateau, border of Peru and Bolivia.


That Saturday, Junya Atawalpa rested on the bottom of the lake as he had done every weekend since he was five years old. It was a calm day, the sun shone in the horizon and the crescent moon was directly above in all its splendor. This was a fantastic view for the tourists, but Junya was used to the beauty of the place and was not easily surprised.

Startled out of his thoughts, he spied a package of snacks and began eating them when he realized the package hadn’t been there before. That was when he felt an excruciating pain, like a sharp blade puncturing the roof of his mouth to the temporal lobe and just above his right ear.

When he finally realized that it was some kind of giant hook tied to a string, something began to pull him down and forward right into the lake. Even though he tried to fight it, it was much stronger than he, and pulled him under the water.

This force was pulling him quickly, farther and farther down and Junya began to lose pressure. Even though he was an excellent diver in ocean waters, diving in rivers, especially at high altitudes, was a different story. As the altitude increases, the atmospheric pressure gradually decreases, and therefore divers have to make some adjustments to decompress, and Junya had not learned how to make these adjustments. At least his breath was exceptional.

He looked more closely at the creature that was pulling him and realized that it was an enormous fish, one that he had never seen before and whose species he could not define. This was very strange, since at this time of the year, summer, ocean waters in the fluvial valleys causes the death of plancton, which then decrease the number of fish in the region.

Once he had arrived at his destination, Junya saw that he was surrounded by many of the same kind of fish. They were big and fat and had huge teeth that didn’t fit in their mouth and looked something like a “piranha”, only they were much larger than normal ones. But the strangest thing of all was that this fish were somehow communicating with each other. It seemed like they all had their own tasks and knew what to do.

Junya was put onto a kind of a flat stone and three of this strange fish began to examine him; they seemed to smile whenever they saw him lose his breath and then panicked. One of the fish pointed his fin in his direction, which was when he realized that fins were an excellent instrument for removing human skin. Junya was forced to watch a fish removing the skin from his leg and then other fish joined in the work, until Junya turned into a big, unrecognizable muscle.

After being literally skinned, he was put out of his misery. One of the fins was stabbed into his heart, and before he could pass out, he saw his heart being removed and devoured by the first fish that was in charge of skinning him.

This was the first case of a person being fished by fish. Throughout the world, in lakes as well as oceans, similar occurrences began to take place. The fish did not always eat their victims as happened to Junya, sometimes the people were returned to land after they had been pulled down to the bottom, but humanity understood the message. This was a warning, that abusive and over fishing could not continue, nor could toxic waste and gas be dumped into the ocean.

This is called the “Fish Revolution”, the first animal revolt in history. It was not the only one nor it will be the last, many of these revolts took place over the years. Apparently the animals felt encouraged by the attitude of the fish, but this is a story for another day.

Publication Date: 01-29-2010

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