Toadies Revenge... a lesson about karma.

[Beno]

I witnessed some animal cruelty a few weeks ago and thought this would be a good story to who ever maybe a bit on the dark side...
I Came across this story a couple of years ago and had to save it since I am a strong believer in karma.... all credit to Paul.



Toady's Revenge

By Paul B. Kidd:

This true story is the reason that I believe that if you are cruel to animals, or for that matter, any living thing, it will come back on you one day.

When I was a kid growing up in Perth my mates and I tried to commit genocide on a loathsome creature called the 'blowie'. Not the blowfly - the blowfish. Or at least that's what we called them over there. No matter where we fished, sooner or later the blowies would turn up in their millions and take over. And they were not a pretty sight. Growing to about 30cm long, they were brown along the back with a snow-white underbelly that puffed up like a prickly balloon when they were caught; big bulging bug eyes like a cane toad and a pair of square teeth that would make Goofy look gormless.

To say the least, they were bloody pests and once they showed up we had to pack up and leave because the chance of catching anything else was pretty remote. They were useless for anything. No good as bait and we read regularly in the papers how people had died or at least got very sick from eating them. And so, with the Department of Fisheries full approval, we took it upon ourselves to rid Perth's waterways of this menace.

We killed every one that we caught. And savage little bastards that we were, we devised the most horrific methods of dispatch imaginable. We stabbed them, threw them under cars on the Canning Bridge, teed off using them as golf balls, left them to die in agony in the hot sun, extracted their teeth while they were still alive and let them go with their entrails hanging out so the other blowies could eat them alive.

My father was appalled at the carnage. "Let me tell you a little story about life", he once said to me as he sat me down and tried to explain to me how whatever we do always comes back to us in some form or another. He called it "karma". "When I was a young boy living on a farm", he said, "there was a billy goat living in the paddock next door. The poor old billy goat had never done anything to me, but I used to chuck rocks at it all the time. I never hit it and it was smart enough to stay out of range. For this reason the grass grew long and rich close to the fence because the billy goat never came close enough to eat it for fear of being hit with a rock.

"So I stayed away for awhile and sure enough, the goat started to graze closer and closer to the fence, gaining more and more bravado as each day passed. So one day when it was happily munching away just on the other side of the fence, I snuck up and threw a full house brick at it and hit it square between the eyes. The poor old goat went down and didn't move. I was mortified. I had no idea that I would kill it. I just wanted to have some fun with it and now it was stone dead. My father thrashed me to within an inch of my life. And as if that wasn't bad enough, he made a chilling prediction that would live with me all of my life to this very day.

"He said that no matter where I went or whatever I did, that goat would haunt me for the rest of my days. It may not be in the shape of a goat, it could be a future boss, a bad motor car or just a bad circumstance in life. But no matter what, every time something rotten happens, you can bet your life that if you close your eyes tight enough, you'll see that goat looking up at you and laughing its head off", he said.

"And it was true. All of my life, whenever something has gone wrong or bad unforeseen circumstances occurred, that goat flashed across my consciousness and sure enough, when I closed my eyes, there it was, having a laugh at my expense. Mind you, what you are doing to those unfortunate blowies is nowhere near as bad as what I did to that poor old goat because the blowies are toxic pests, but you can bet your life that somewhere, sometime, there will be an even up. Life's like that."

I discarded as a load of crap what my wise old dad had told me and went about devising new horrendous methods of disposing of the blowies. We set fire to them, skinned them alive and gouged their eyes out. So much for "karma". I told my mates about what dad had said and they would stab the blowies repeatedly and yell out "karma, karma, karma" while they were doing it. We were horrid little beasts.

And then in my late teens I moved to Sydney and blowies became a thing of the past because they are very rare around these parts. Soon I had forgotten about them altogether as I pursued a blowie-less fishing career off the stunning rock ledges, undersea mountains and in the warm ocean currents that combine to make the eastern seaboard of Australia one of the fishiest places on Earth. In the late '60s I started writing feature fishing stories for the national magazines and I did a weekly column in the local Sydney eastern suburbs newspaper.

In 1972 I opened a fishing tackle shop in Bondi Junction which became the centre of fishing activity in the district. I had set myself up as the local expert which, in hindsight, left me wide open for any form of practical joke. After all, experts are supposed to be invincible, aren't they?

So when my mate Ray Bourke asked me to partner him in the local Fishing Derby which offered cash prizes for the heaviest of any species weighed, I jumped at the chance. Ray was a hot-shot angler and knew Sydney Harbour and the close offshore reefs backwards. If we couldn't take out a few prizes, no one could and we started red-hot favourites in the event.

But it just wasn't my day. We fished Long Reef about 6km off Sydney Heads in Ray's 9m boat and just before daylight Ray caught a jewie that would go about 25kg. As the sun was coming up he boated a nice snapper of around 7kg and by mid-morning he'd caught an assortment of reef fish which included nannygai, sergeant baker and morwong. I hadn't had a bite. By lunch-time I was starting to wonder if I had leprosy when I had a solid bite and hooked-up. It was a heavy fish and it seemed that it was its bulk rather than its fighting ability that kept me busy on the 6kg line for about 10 minutes.

At last it was alongside the boat and Ray got between me and the fish, which I was yet to see, and netted it. "Struth, mate", he yelled. "What a whopper. It's the biggest toadfish I've ever seen in my life. You'll win a prize with this one for sure."

Toadfish? What the bloody hell was a toadfish? I was soon to find out as Ray lifted the net and emptied its contents into the bottom of the boat. Oh no!!!! I couldn't believe my eyes. It was the biggest blowie I had ever seen in my life. So that's what they called blowies in the eastern states - toadfish. It must have been 60cm long and weighed about 4kg. And there it was smiling up at me from the deck with its buck-teeth, grunting and puffing and farting as much to say, "Hello, Paul, haven't you been expecting me?"

No, I hadn't. Yuk! All those memories of the unspeakable things that I had done to his ancestors came flooding back and my father's words were ringing in my ears, "It's called 'karma', son."

"Good on you, mate", Bourkie said, "that'll weigh and you can bet that no one else will catch a toady bigger than that. That's if anyone catches one at all. They're pretty rare around these parts." So rare that I'd never heard anyone mention them. "But I can't weigh a blowie", I protested. "Rubbish", he said. "The contest says the biggest of any species and that's a species. You'll get a good cash prize."

Under protest he put the vile, grunting and blurting beast into the capture bag with his assortment of reef fish and we headed into the weigh-in at Watsons Bay where a huge crowd, including press photographers and TV cameramen, had gathered. Seeing as Ray and I had started favourites we got a big cheer as both of us carried the huge bag full of fish to the scales. The onlookers oohed and aahed and cheered and applauded as Ray produced fish after fish that took out the prizes in their field.

"Come on mate, it's your turn now", Bourkie called to me as there was only the one giant bulge left in the bag and the crowd hummed in anticipation of what it was. But their sighs of enthusiasm turned to shrieks of laughter as I upended the bag and the giant blowie collected grass cuttings all along its body as it rolled along the ground until it came to a stop and looked for all the world like a slimy, green, grinning lamington.

It brought the house down when the weighmaster held the stinking thing up by its tail and the crowd chanted in unison, "toady, toady, toady" and all pointed at me. "Come on, Paul, you should know better than to try and weigh this rotten thing", the weighmaster said above the laughter, "they've been outlawed in every state for donkey's years."

I looked at Bourkie who had collapsed laughing. I'd been set-up beautifully and I had to cop it sweet or be a bad sport. The blowies had had their revenge. It took me a long time to live it down and to this day I cringe whenever anyone yells out "toady".

My old dad was right. And let this be a lesson to all of you out there who are cruel to dumb animals. They will always come back to you in some form or another.

[Taleb]

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[Rogue_Hunter]

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Karma or not, you should never harm any living creature.

[Scarecrow]

Great reading Beno, thanks for posting. :thumbsup:

Now you are going to make all those non-catch and release superstitious carp anglers a bit worried :super:

Tight Lines

Rob

[rixter]

Great post , regardless of the torture , most of us have been pretty rotten as kids at some time or another mutating a fish ?.
But oh my gosh , you took it past extreme by the sounds of it, and yes karma bit you on the ass (I've always been a strong believer in Karma too after stuff i have done in the past , I've been a nice guy now for years and no bad karma ! ..lol ).
I was in tears laughing by the end of the post , thanks . Now that's Karma !

[Noxcus]

Always prefer a quick death to fish if im certain to keep otherwise i keepem in saltwater if i dont bag out just in case release back well and live, expecially the whiting species love to eat the buggers but cant wastem either if i only get 1 or 2. No to fish cruelty they make our day :D