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Home > It Takes a Village

It Takes a Village [1]

Fiction [2]
9.14.16

In mid-July, a young man caught an alligator gar [3]—an extremely unusual, sharp-toothed, prehistoric-looking fish—while fishing from a lake in Schenectady, New York. He took a photo of the megafish to post on social media, and then let it go, in accordance with his catch-and-release policy. His mother subsequently shared the post, and her colleague then contacted the U.S. Geological Survey, which in turn contacted the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, whose agents confirmed that it was an invasive species. This led to the mayor of Schenectady offering a one hundred dollar award to anyone who managed to catch the fish [4]. Write a short story that unfolds in a similar fashion, beginning with the small action of one individual, which then puts into effect a chain of events involving a whole town.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/it_takes_a_village

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/it_takes_a_village [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/fiction [3] http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/alligator-gar [4] http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Reports-Alligator-gar-snagged-9126040.php