Many moons ago (as my Cheyenne friends like to say), I wrote a story in this blog that was absolutely true (more or less), about fishermen on Lake Titicaca (Bolivia) who had taken from those waters an absolutely gorgeous fish that was covered with silvery hair.

At that time, certain bad mouthed people inundated me with diverse insults, they said that I was fantasist, a druggie, or a peripheral liar (one doesn’t invent that: “peripheral liar”!) I was even on the point of alerting the honorable Mr. Levy, my lawyer, but Cyril dissuaded me from doing so under the specious pretext: “Be careful Fleche. The readers of le Mouching are certainly very sensitive, but violent as well, and the tires of your Jaguar TE could pay the price.”

Today, at the risk of being insulted once more, I affirm that the famous lake, with the stupid name of Titicaca, contains in it’s depths, fish covered with silvery hair and that it’s not the only place in the world. The specialists now declare that there exists trout with thick coats (fur-bearing trout) evolved to resist the cold waters where they reside (Canada and certain states in the USA such as Colorado, Wyoming and Montana).

It seems that, according to the specialists, this fur is the consequence of an incident going back to the year 1870 during which cauldrons of hair tonic fell into the Arkansas River in Colorado.

The earliest known mention of fur-bearing trout was published in the “Montana Wildlife” magazine in which a fisherman was said to have caught one of these fish in “Iceberg Lake”. These waters are so cold that their temperature is below the freezing point and that the fish themselves are so cold that they can be used as a substitute for ice in refrigerators.

The fur can also be used to treat Angina and Goiter. You will undoubtedly insist: those are just rumors!  Maybe so… but what wonderful rumors.