After a day of wandering, they rediscovered the tailings pond and they were delighted when they saw its waters, even with many strange colors and the crusty surface near the shore. But as they stood at the edge looking at the ugly water for a few minutes, they realized something even stranger, and wonderful. Willy had been right; the bubbles they had seen the first time were actually from live fish, a native species.
Fish! Si senor, these fish were there waiting to be caught. Of course, they would come out of a gloppy old tailings pond, but hot dang, Juan said, it was great. They congratulated each other for their smart thinking in coming back to the pond. Boy, oh boy, what a golden opportunity awaited and it was just out there for the taking. They could harvest the fish, drink the boiled water, and survive. Hooray! Scooping up fish would be easy in the shallow tailings pool. All those wiggly bodies seemed to be laid out for the taking.
The fish clearly were breeding in the pond or there wouldn’t have been so many of them and their size was tremendous. When they waded in and pulled the first fish out, that thing flopped around madly. It was huge, but the strange thing was that it had three eyes.
“What’s the problem?” asked Willy when he noticed Juan looking at the fish in disgust.
“That ain’t no normal fish, is it?” said Juan.
“What? Does the extra eye bother you?” Willy asked.
“Yes, it does,” said Juan.
“I’m gonna fillet it up, anyways. Wait till you taste it,” Willy bragged. “You’re going to love the way it cooks. This here fish is going to fry up great. Open up a can of corn, too, will you?”
They set up their camp near the tailings pond and Willy fried the fish on the camp stove Juan set up. They also took a big can of tailings water and set it on the stove to boil.
“I don’t like this,” said Juan,” I don’t like the look of that fish.”
“Okay,” said Willy, “go on harping and harping on the fact that the fish shouldn’t have an extra eye but I gotta ask you why are you harping on it? You are just being a know-it-all. And you know nobody likes a know-it-all. I want to eat and I want to enjoy my fish. I’m starving for meat after all that walking.”
Willy fried the big fish and he thought the flavor marvelous and the flesh moist and succulent. It had turned out the way a fish should. With Willy going on and on about how good the fish was, Juan broke down and ate some too. Neither of them got sick right away. It would have been so much simpler that way, if they had gotten sick quickly, because they would have known something was wrong with the fish for sure and, believe me, they wouldn’t have gone on eating them.