Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
An oarfish surfaces at a sandbar, bartender says hey, why the long body? (Robert Hayes/Storyful)
If there’s one thing that’s a bit unsettling about 2025 so far, it’s all of the things. Fires raging all over Los Angeles, planes not staying in the sky like they’re supposed to, and we don’t do politics here, so [redacted]. But at least we’ve got nature, which is generally always healing. As long as deep sea creatures like oarfish, seen as harbingers of doom, keep away from the land and – oh wait, one just surfaced in Mexico – guess we’re screwed!
The oarfish is a bony fish that generally lives at 660 to 3,000 feet below the surface. They’re not often seen alive, as alive humans generally don’t swim around in the deep sea. If an oarfish is close to the surface, that suggests it’s either been on quite a bender, or a storm brought it there. They’ve also been seen before earthquakes, since, if your home deep beneath the sea started vibrating, you’d likely get the hell out, also. So you can imagine why they’ve been nicknamed “doomsday fish.”
A video taken on February 9th shows an oarfish washing ashore at Playa El Quemado in Baja California Sur. Beachgoer Robert Hayes told Storyful that the fish swam straight at him with his head above the surface. They put it back into the ocean, but it returned several times, probably because of all the paparazzi.
He doesn’t look very happy… (USA Today/YouTube)
“I just wanted to hang out,” the distraught oarfish said. “It was nice out, I kept hearing about humans, and I figured I’d catch some rays. Not sun, I mean sting rays. But as soon as I make it to the surface, everyone’s yelling ‘Oh no, there goes the doomsday fish!’ First of all, I have a name, and it’s Clarence. Life’s hard enough without people calling you a harbinger of doom, and if they got to know me, they’d realize I’m really super chill.
“Anyways, I’m trying to get comfortable, but they kept throwing me back in the water,” Clarence continued. “Now how the hell am I supposed to get to that oarfish concert I was trying to go to?” Unfortunately, he’d disappeared back into the ocean before he could be told that it was actually an O.A.R. and Phish concert. At least it seems like doomsday has been averted for the time being, but should anything go wrong between now and forever, we know we’ve got Clarence as a scapegoat, er, scapefish.
This article is based on fully factual news, so if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
