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10 Frankengar IN THE FIFTY-GALLON TANK to the left of the TV swims a hybrid gar. I’ve had it for seven years, it’s twenty inches long, and it’s twice the circumference of a bratwurst. It was once tiger-striped in silver and black, but now it’s completely black. Back in 2003, I used to get on eBay and do searches with the word “garfish.” My hope was to find some beaten up old seven-footer that’d been mounted on a fifty-five-gallon drum of toxic waste someone was trying to get rid of. I figured I’d bid twenty bucks, win the thing, then drive across the country to get it. But that’s not what I discovered. A listing for “crocodile garfish” came up, which I had never heard of before. So I sent the seller a message asking what they were, and he replied that he ran a hatchery down in Florida and had crossed alligator and longnose gar and this is what he called them. He didn’t know much about them, though, because basically the species just got invented. Still, he estimated that if longnose can reach six feet, and if alligator gar can get ten feet long, their offspring could grow to be somewhere in between. They cost $7.50 a piece, and he also had shortnose and longnose for $5 each. I got on PayPal and sent him $17.50 pronto, plus shipping. Three days later a box arrived. And in that box was a plastic bag filled with water. And in that water was one purply shortnose, one silvery belly-up longnose, and a highly aggressive crocodile gar—all of them three inches long. I put both survivors in a ten-gallon tank, which the hybrid soon ruled. It was crotchety and twitchy, always snapping at its own reflection, sometimes even sparring with it, while hogging all the food for itself. Maybe, I thought, the shortnose was just more lethargic. Or, I considered , perhaps it got brain damaged from being shipped by the U.S. Postal Service. But whatever the case, I decided to separate them so the shortnose could get some grub. 77 The shortnose, however, just sat there like some sort of bummed-out fish on Prozac, not really caring if it got fed or not. Eventually I named it Scrawwww!, because a colleague asked me what its name was and I decided to screech out the sound of a crow. Within a year, Scrawwww! died from depression, leaving me with just one gar: a totally demented mutant gar—which, with any sudden sound or movement in the room, would go bashing around the tank like a blind, deaf-and-dumb kid covered in fire ants. And years later, it’s still freaking out, always striking and striking and striking the glass—if not dancing in front of its own reflection, trying to taunt itself into a fight. But mostly it just floats there in the plants beneath the fluorescent bulb. At first I fed it grasshoppers caught in the yard, or crickets from the pet store. I’d drop one in and the flailing insect would attract the gar, who’d come up with its peripheral vision, then strike sideways, missing half the time. But when it hit, that bug was dead meat! I also fed it little sunnies, bass, and random minnows caught at the lake. I’d drop them in and they’d huddle together, while the gar hovered above like a lance, snout pointing down, poised at a forty-five-degree angle, its rippling tail moving it back and forth with subtle undulations. When that hybrid got to be about seven inches long, I switched its diet to night crawlers, which were an easier gar food to keep around, since there’s always a carton in the fridge. But it wasn’t easy getting it accustomed to worms. At first I’d drop them in and they’d sink to the bottom, where that gar, for some reason, refused to eat them. After a few weeks, though, I began to hold them on the surface, so they’d dangle and attract the gar. Who’d sidle up and then erupt, thrashing like a frothing hyena shaking its prey to break its neck. This resulted in quite a few needly fangs sinking into my finger flesh before I got the hang of it. Once it even leapt from the tank and...

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