Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1893 — The Ferocious Carp. [ARTICLE]

The Ferocious Carp.

The Lincoln News-Messenger suggests that the prevalent scarcity of wild ducks and geese this season in California, is partly due to the fact that carp have denuded the lakes, ponds and sloughs of plant life, to which the Wheatland Four Corners responds as follows: “The News-Messenger is no doubt right in the theory, for wc have heard that the residents along Plumas Lake and Feathers River complain of the carp. In some places they are as thick ns mudhens, and have a similar habit of making regular assaults upon the grain and pumpkin fields not farther distant than fifty miles from water. The carp is a carnivorous fish. We have known fishermen who have lost the soles of their shoes, and even now and then sacrificed a leg in answer to the carp's jaws, when they have been so negligent as to angle with their pedal extremities in juxtaposition to the water. Thousands of our hunting dogs of the choicest breeds can find their scalps on the watery girdle of the carp. "In connection with game, the carp has not been satisfied in robbing the fowls of their daily bread by mowing the fields for mijes around, but have taken extreme delight and solid comfort in grasping ducks by the right hand as they swam upon the water and inviting them into the carp’s parlor at the bottom of the stream. No doubt the carp is a great factor in the game question, and should he not receive a Congressional appropriation shortly he will come into greater prominence.”