This is a story of a fish. Not a particularly beautiful fish, not too red, not too blue, not too large, not too small... It's not the one that supposedly swallowed Jonah (that fish was much too large), nor was it the fishes Jesus supposedly fed 5,000 people with (those fish were much too small), and neither is it the type of fish a researcher would dream up with the sole intent and purpose of driving a literal creationist mad...That's purely icing... (and juuuuuuuust riiiiight...)
I remember a time in the not-too-distant past--no, no, not about the Jesus Shark--when my father took umbrage that not all creatures were reproducing after their own kind! What with the wholphins, the ligers, and the Primula kewensis (that would be a new type of primrose for you non-Latin-speaking gardeners out there...)
But then there's this fish, the oddly named California Sheephead (and it may just be me, but when I look at it, the name "Dolly" doesn't exactly spring to mind...) The remarkable thing about the California Sheephead, however, isn't so much its size, or its color, or its ability to eat mollusks... It's the willful ignorance and sheer exuberance of this fish to defy set-forth biblical law! Hello, "male and female he created them"? Does the California Sheephead not have a bible!?
You see, California Sheephead are all born female. Each and every one. All female (but before the feminists get carried away, you should finish reading...). So there they are, a whole flock of scaly vagina's, loving life, swimming free, eating mollusks, until... Well, depending on factors such as size, age, and how many other California Sheephead are lurking in the general vicinity... Well, it seems they then grow a penis, much to their own consternation... (The feminists of the group may now cry with anger and frustration...) Every single California Sheephead eventually ends up a male--usually four-fifths of their life is spent wondering where this new organ came from and why they feel the need to stab the younger ones with it who haven't grown one--yet. In fact, they usually end up spontaneously growing this penis at about seven or eight years of age, then spend the rest of their almost fifty years on this earth lugging it around making a new batch of females with the other females who have yet to undergo gender reassignment surgery...
I suppose this means Chaz Bono wishes he had been born a California Sheephead. But then again, maybe not...
Believe it or not, there a quite a large number of fishes who have this female-to-male sex switching going on (and not in the 1970s kind of way--hello swingers, wherever you are!), but California Sheepheads are unique in that they are the only ones who always start out female and always end up males! (And you thought the orgies you attended were confusing!)
And of course, I never did care overly much for s/he-food...
Now, while there may be something that needs to be said about the whole "Hmm? I wonder what I would do if one morning I woke up the opposite sex!?" (all straight men reading this suddenly started rubbing their chests knowing they would spend all day playing with their new boobs...) I know I personally am breathing a sigh of relief that I know I'll still have what I have when I wake up tomorrow morning...
As long as I stay away from Lorena Bobbit...
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