Canteen Fish

Now this may seem very, very hard to believe indeed. The true testimony of one who has encountered the fabled Canteen Fish. I am this person. Since the cowboys of the 1850’s began roaming the vast miles of California’s Mojave desert from Barstow east toward the Arizona border and beyond, many odd tales of this strange creature have surfaced in the native folklore. I worked on a ranch, It so happens, in Rattlesnake Canyon, and one at Old Woman Springs for five years of my life. I rode with a man who is a third generation cowboy over many, many miles of desert valleys and rocky hillsides. It was routine for us to check out water holes and we were forever on the lookout for new sources that could be developed. During these years I saw many a strange thing, I assure you. Some, so bizarre they straight out defy believability. But this, the Canteen Fish, was the damn strangest thing I’ve ever encountered. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered it was known to many cowboys and miners who lived out of doors as I did, so to speak, in communion with Nature. This fish is no excellent swimmer. On the contrary, she is a bottom dweller, where she wallows in the soft sand of secluded, shallow, shifting waters. These change with the seasons and the years and are merely temporal pools. Few but the cows and wildlife know of their existence. The pools or the fish that live within them... On their backs, which are like the backs of camels, behind the dorsal, there is a hump. This hump is a bladder. And the bladder fills with water, bloating and swelling, in time of need. They are very sensitive little creatures, who can foretell their water holes going dry. At which times they migrate. Evolution has provided well for them, not unlike the African mudfish or hibernating toads, who wait out draughts in states of suspended animation. The fishes are approximately six inches long and weigh no more than an once. The bladder, filled, holds about eleven more. This can sustain them on the two to three mile trek to the next spring, which by some miracle of Nature they

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instinctively locate.

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One can only imagine the benefit to human desert dwellers who take the gentle fishes on as friends and guides. I first encountered them on the march across a canyon wash not far from the ranch. Single file, in a string or column using their strong little tails and rigid pectoral fins as front feet. A miniature caravan of peculiar trunkless elephants! And anyone who is an experienced desert tracker will have seen this strange pattern in the sand before, likely wondering just exactly what fashioned it there. I dismounted and tied my horse in the shade. I needed to follow and watch them. I was spell bound. I got along side the procession and stooping to get a better glimpse, when one, near the middle of the line of 11, turned and looked directly at me. She had the most pathetic and endearing eyes, which drooped and bulged and looked straight into mine. I could not bare the thought of interfering with their pilgrimage. Moreover, I took an instant liking to her and straight away named her Puppy. I can not tell you why or how, but I can tell you this: She knew it. And as we made our careful way along, each time I looked down at her, she looked right up and back at me. Now this is perhaps the strangest part of all. These little fishes seem to have a relative intelligence and exhibit definite ‘loyalty’. For a long time I never shared my whole truth with anyone until I discovered there were others who had experienced these same behavioral qualities in the Canteen Fishes. An old cowboy round the fire one night relayed a story his father had told him about a fish he carried in his saddle bag. A fish that knew the way to water and was more faithful than his dog! He kept in it the water trough and

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took it with him when he rode.

Now this old man’s tales were tall to be sure, and so I took the story with a grain of salt. He said his father told him; “it’s sure a good thing more people don’t know about the little critters or there’d be no water left in these parts!” I didn’t mention to him that I, too, had met a fish in the desert, thinking even he would take me for far too drunk or half crazy. No, not until I found a book in the Yucca Valley library called “The Field Guide To North American Monsters” by W. Haden Blackman, did I at last decide to put this account to paper. Blackman describes the fishes as being able to, “detect water within a twenty mile radius. With it’s hump brimming,” he continues, “a Canteen Fish can survive in the desert heat for several weeks, which usually allows it enough time to seek out a new habitat”. I followed the fellows for nearly a mile and a half before they found that new habitat, and it seemed to me they new exactly where they were going. They made their way, (and it was no easy task to follow behind), to nothing more than a teeny tiny mud hole under a thicket of scrub. All of this in the shadow shade of a giant cottonwood tree, battered and broken by the winds but fighting, flourishing still, green and full. The grass was tall but, watching for rattlers, I tracked them in.

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There they began to wallow and flip-flop, wriggling their way down below the thin mysterious, murky water line. I scooped about, discovering they had found a substantial spring, and I was duly impressed. Then I noticed, there in the grass, Puppy. She’d held back from the others. I thought about it carefully, all of it, for a moment then figured; “hell, I can through her in the water trough and bring her back tomorrow.”

Her bladder full, ever so gently I abducted her. her comfortably in my duster pocket.

Placing

Curiously, following my introduction to Puppy and her school, I was visited by her in a series of strange dreams. But that first night, with Puppy in the trough, I had a revelation. This, I imagine, is not too unexpected given the oddity of the situation, but in this dream she seemed to be telling me, without words, more and more about herself. She told me that centuries ago, though there was no more water than today, there were thousands of her kind. But Indians and miners, explorers and pioneers captured them often and sucked them dry to stave off dehydration. Often, they would save them in their saddle bags and fry them up for dinner. This was a way, she said, for them to get further and further from water hole to water hole. Oh, little did they know. How little did they know. She spoke of the tremendous decline in the desert tortoise population for different but similar reasons, and a dozen

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more fascinating disclosures. But after the manner of dreams, much was lost to the first light of dawn and the awakening of the world. My gear together, after breakfast I was off on my way. Last stop was to pick up Puppy. For fearing the rancher’s wife – her intense dislike of fishes in the water troughs and spring boxes, I thought it best under any circumstances to return Puppy to the water hole. Once down at the trough, I encountered the whole of the school round about it looking up dolefully. Unable to surmount the vertical walls of stone and concrete, they seemed to pine for the prisoner. Thinking on my feet I fetched a bucket and gathered them together in it with some spring water. And collecting my things, we all were off. That morning I released the little creatures where they had wanted to be and once again they wriggled to the bottom. I have never seen Puppy or the other Canteen Fishes again to this day. Haden Blackman states that, “..Canteen Fish have remained a closely guarded secret for centuries because those who know of the animals are determined to protect them. If the secret of the Canteen Fish were to be discovered by the general public, the animals could become the water fountains of the desert and would likely die out within months. Monsterologists are encouraged to conduct their research carefully and surreptitiously to protect the species.” My old cowboy friend told me, “Dad let the little guy go one day in a pond in a quiet valley which ended their long, fond relationship. Believe it or not, Dad thought that that was the best way. The only way. And I, too, believe that friends go their separate ways. The creatures of Nature each have a path to follow. A God given path. I often think of Puppy and dream of her. I am very glad she lives the life of a Canteen Fish.

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