Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 122, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1904 — FUNNY SWELL FISH. [ARTICLE]

FUNNY SWELL FISH.

Puffer Is the Jolliest Member of the Finny Tribes in Salt Water. The funniest little fellow in salt water is the puffer, or swell fish. Fishermen call him the blow fish. When he is swimming around at ease, with nothing to alarm him, ho looks queer enough, for the skin of his abdomen is all loose and wrinkled, and he has such a big, three-cornered head that he looks entirely absurd. His mouth, instead of being big and gaping, as most fish mouths are, is only a tiny round hole at the end of a pointed, conical snout. Out of this circular mouth protrude his teeth, like those of a rabbit. ' .

He would be about as homely a fish as could be made if it were not for the beautiful orange and yellow and silver colorings that play all over alm. But queer as he looks when he Is at ease, it is only when he is frightened or excited that he becomes really funny. If ho is hooked, for instance, he comes to the surface grinding those protruding . teeth so that the sound can be heard a good many feet away. And then, as soon as the hand touches him, he begins to grunt hoarsely, and with each grunt he swells a bit, till within a few moments he has puffed himself so full of air that when the fishermen hurl him at the water with all their force he pimply bounds and rebounds like a rubber ball. If he is dropped into the water af.er blowing himself full of air. he floats on it as lightly as thistledown, and he will stay that way until he has assured himself that danger has gone by. He does the same thing when he is pursued by other fish. And as he floats almost entirely out of water, with only a little bit of his hard, spiny body sunk under the surface, very few fish can hurt him once he is inflated.—Washington Post.