Kurt Cobain once sang that fish don’t have any feelings, and I wonder if that’s true. I was walking around Long’s Park a while ago and saw a partly mangled dead goldfish. My guess is that one of the Herons that live there got over ambitious and bit off more than he could chew, or maybe left to invite his friends for lunch. So I took a few pictures because I was intrigued by the whole thing.

Then the fish moved. At first I thought this was strange because dead fish rarely move, but apparently she was not quite done being alive. So being a fisherman I considered throwing her back, but the wounds were serious.

If only I was a fish doctor, if only I got there earlier, if only I won the Powerball last night, if only, well, that fish was screwed no matter what. So I watched her for a minute wondering if she was suffering. I imagined she was as I would be if I got eaten by a giant bird and left for dead like that.

I finally kicked her back into the lake in the delusional hope that she would take a couple of deep breaths and swim away with just a flesh wound, warning her fish friends to stay deep. But she floated on the top with those terrified eyes staring right at me.

It became too painful to watch and I told myself it was the natural cycle of life, survival of the fittest and all that. And that maybe fish don’t have any feelings and she wasn’t suffering at all.

In goldfish heaven there are no angry birds.