Прыгоды з жыцця прыроды
Adventures from the life of nature
Вячаслаў Грамыка
Для сярэдняга школьнага ўзросту
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 263с.
Мінск 2003
But such giants, it must be admitted, are rarely found. Six foot cat-fish weighing 90 pounds are found in the Dnepr and Neman rivers. But catching them is not easy, they are indeed cunning and nimble.
Cat-fish like deep pools and quiet pockets of waters, where they live most of the year. Only at the time of spawning do they move to less deep places, about three feet deep.
Cat-fish spawn when the water is well warmed by the sun (May to June). Spawning is accompanied by characteristic gurgling. A female makes a primitive “nest”, where she would lay from 10 to 450 thousand pieces of spawn. A male then guards this “nest for about 3 to 4 days. And finally quick, smart young fish hatch out of the spawn. At once they start to hunt and chase after small water-borne insects.
Grown cat-fish eat various food. It can be worms, large insects, mollusks, but frogs and fish are preferred. They dig themselves in sand and lie at the bottom, awaiting their prey. All the prey has to do is to get close enough, then the cat-fish draws a lot of water together with dozens of small fish into itself.
Larger cat-fish sometimes hunt actively, taking frogs from the surface, and eat ducklings and the young of other water birds. They can sometimes attack dogs swimming across rivers.
So you can't play about with the cat-fish. Oversize ones can be dangerous even for people. A leading authority in hunting and fishing L.P. Sabaneyev in his “Fishing Calendar” recalls some occasions when especially large cat-fish drowned children bathing in a river.
The cat-fish is a valuable commercial fish, but unfortunately their numbers diminish year by year. They are listed in the Red Book of the Belarussian Republic and are protected by law.
I am going to tell you about a cat-fish that lived in a quiet deep pool of water and grew from a small fry into a wise giant, master of the river element.
And He Was Sush A Mischievous Fellow...
X little cat-fish was so on the loose with his fellow cat-fish that he failed to slow down and plopped down on the yellow warmed sand of the river bank. In a fright he struggled, wriggling his body and flapping his flat little tail. Several times he desperately jerked until he slid into the safety of the water.
When his fear had passed, he dove in to the depths, where his father cat-fish rested near some slippery snags. The father slowly flapped his fins and protected his offspring with them. The tormented little cat-fish fell asleep straight away and awoke only next morning.
Then the friendly little family set off on a hunt. The cat-fish father, digging in the sand, opened his enormous jaws and a stream of water rushed into his mouth carrying from the bottom a multitude of water insects and other small creatures of a similar type. Then he slowly filtered the water pressing together his wide lips. After this, he slowly opened his mouth gradually
moving the upper lip away from the lower one. Now all the cat-fish offspring surrounded their father, seizing prey, then everything began all over again. The older cat-fish closed its mouth and all the offspring swam aside. For seme time the father kept quiet and then again swallowed as much water as he could, together with the catch.
When the young cat-fish had eaten their fill, they swam on further to play or simply to warm themselves in the shallows, then the older cat-fish permitted himself to satisfy his hunger.
The little cat-fish grew up quickly. Sometimes he tried to catch a water-tiger or a small beetle, but he didn't succeed at first. Although a reddish colored beetle was small, he resisted hard, strongly gripping with his forelegs onto a small stalk and when the little cat-fish got noticeably tired from the enduring struggle with his little victim, the beetle has painfully tickled the lips of the cat-fish with his hind paws, so the cat-fish had to retreat. The beetle, getting free again, instantly disappeared under a large stone.
On his first independent hunt the cat-fish wasn't lucky. He wasn't by any means able to have a snack and was forced to return to his parent to satisfy himself by his father's catch.
The little cat-fish needed a lot of food: he started to grow very intensively, but how can you grow, if there isn’t much food? Even children know this.
The little cat-fish had excellent appetite, but he couldn't always satisfy it, though he didn't grieve, for so far his father's catch sufficed.
Once, in the large pebble deposited by water, he noticed an appetizing red worm — a mosquito larva, which fishermen usually call a mosquito grub. Though the little cat-fish knew nothing about it, for him it wasn't really important. The main thing was — the larva was prey, and he wanted to eat very much. The little cat-fish slid skillfully between the pebble and seized the larva, which started to wriggle his long body in various directions, but the little cat-fish firmly held him in his jaws.
A few more successful movements of his mouth and the little cat-fish celebrated victory. In addition, the catch turned out to be nutritious and sufficed for half a day.
When he felt hungry again, the little cat-fish didn’t even try to take part in the sharing of the parental “pie”. He swam a little away and hid. It was much more interesting to get food himself. He didn't have to wait long. In the thick slime he noticed several darting Daphnias, which are sometimes used as fish food in aquariums. The young plunderer, unnoticed, moved closer, hid, then suddenly darted forward. Daphnias are not as strong physically as mosquito larvae. The little cat-fish, without any trouble, swallowed at first one, then a second that had in its haste got tangled in some fine threads in the green slime. He then frolicked about and darted under a snag and already wanted to go to attack larger prey, but remembered his failed hunt and retreated.
Anyway, he was not hungry now, so he decided to wander a little. But there was no one nearby, there was no one to play with. Besides, he was also afraid to swim up close to the bank, where larger fish might be. Then the little cat-fish left the place where he had successfully hunted and dived deep to meet his family.
Time passed, and the life of the little cat-fish became more varied. Like his congeners, the little cat-fish mostly led a nocturnal way of life. Why it is so — no one knows. The little cat-fish simply turned his attention to the behavior of the others — the elders — and followed their example. In the daytime the water along the bank and on the surface got strongly warmed by the sun and many fish didn't like it. However, with the approach of dusk even the river pool, where his family lived, seemed to have become totally different.
The cat-fish swam upwards from the depths up to the very surface and somersaulting, really started to revel. It was especially noisy before the start of the nighttime storms. The cat-fish swam slowly to the surface, flopped there, made several sharp turns, and beat on the water surface with their tails so hard that the noise could be heard several kilometers away.
This reveling continued almost all night. The thunder of a storm rolled through the air, and the nighttime darkness was cut from time to time with streaks of lightning. Warm, hefty rain
resonantly leashed the river water, and mysterious splashing of the fish was added to all that.
The frothed nighttime water stunned all sorts of small fry and lifted to the surface various water-borne organisms, which helplessly buzzed in a stunned state in the muddy pool.
Then the morning came. It became lighter over the lakes, and the family of cat-fish started to feast. Maybe they had especially arranged the nighttime game, in order to prepare themselves for an appetizing breakfast. The little cat-fish also skillfully darted about and sought out prey: worms, small fish and other small fry. The breakfast turned out to be really excellent and the little cat-fish set out with a feeling of satisfaction to rest under a rotten snag.
A whole week passed with different sorts of worries. The little cat-fish grew and became the size of an average gudgeon. Nature has endowed this species (cat-fish) with a quick rate of growth — within a week only they manage to turn from a grub into a small fish weighing 10 to 15 grams. Now the little cat-fish is no longer tiny, he felt equal amongst many other fresh-water fish like, for example, roach and crucian. If earlier he wasn't distinguished from other small fish, now his body began to take shape and gradually began to look like a grown fish. His head increased in size and thick sharp teeth began to appear.
The little cat-fish learnt to swim fast. He was helped in this by a strong fin, which grew underneath almost from the middle of his body. When he twisted the finned part of his body and then straightened out — the lunge turned out very impressive. Now he no longer passively eats worms or his parent's catch. Now he's already a real hunter, a threat to all small fry, tadpoles and the largest insects. How tasty and appetizing they all are!
The little cat-fish didn't waste time. Only in the hottest time did he lie at the bottom.
He was smart with his movements, and even used several different tricks. Sometimes he hid somewhere near the bank, near a snag or large stone and lay and waited for his victim. He was helped in this by the changes in his body, which was now clearly different from the usual shape of fish. His body grew transversely and became wide and very strong. When he lay on
the bottom he became almost unnoticeable to his competitors and victims, the more so because the upper side of his body looked like the riverbed — the skin darkened and became slippery. If circumstances demanded it, the little cat-fish dug into sand or silt at the bottom. It was easy to do that: he had to lie on the bottom and with just a bit of movement of his body he plunged into the soft ground. If, in addition, he flicked his tail, he covered himself from above with silt or sand. Then he just watched all and everything that happened around.
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