Despite their differences as to the import of the voice, they chopped up the talking carp anyway and sold it.

I can understand the Ecuadorean getting a little spooked because the carp wasn't talking Latin or Spanish, the two main languages of non-human miracle messengers, but what's with the Jew? He knew both what the carp was saying and what a talking carp might be worth whole.

The NY Times report was kind of jocular, too, and I didn't like that. Catholics have been receiving messages via tortillas, trees, and sheep for years, so the Jews get one turn through a fish and the world laughs? What gets me is that unaware people ate the carp! I mean there are people out there now with a piece of talking gefilte fish in their bellies!

Everybody listens when their stomach rumbles, but now they've got to listen extra-carefully because the message "which was apocalyptic as I understand it" has gotten scrambled like a Dada poem and it's all bits and pieces among gurgles and growls.

The Jews say that 36 just men keep the world going. Now there are 36 bellies out there, each one holding part of the message, and it's a matter of some urgency that they be found, set next to one another, interviewed by rabbis, put in the right order, deciphered, and translated first into Latin, then into English.