A conversation this past weekend at a friend’s home who lives just off the south branch of the Chicago River led to startling, earth-shattering, and terrifyingly mundane aquatic Chicago trivia information—about alligators in the river. Naturally, when the topic somehow came up, the small group featuring an IT mastermind, an architect, and an engineer, turned to me to say, “Jon, surely YOU have heard about the alligators found in the Chicago River?” Oh, that’s right, because I have my finger on the pulse of everything that happens near water in the greater Chicagoland area, I forgot, how silly of me. When I told them “No, I never heard about that” a wave of disappointment swept over the group as if they were thinking “What do you think he REALLY he does for a living if he didn’t know about the alligators?”
So, mostly to impress my friends, but also to entertain the Blue Planet-reading public, I present: our Top 10 Chicagoland Fish Stories!
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SH-SH-Sh-SH-SH-SH- SHARK!!!!!!!
Phew, well thank good news it turned out to be OK……..or was it?
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This is a thing? Really!!?!?!?
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Well, looks like this really happened.
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Wait, then it happened again?
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OH COME ON!!!! Or should I say, I wonder what GATE that was at?
See what I did there? It’s like gator and gate. I think you get it.
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These guys are the scariest of the bunch.
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Oh no!
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Was that your brother Mr. Piranha?
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You are trouble and you are banned Mr. Frankenstein.
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No link and no joke here folks.
It’s been something we’ve written about before, from fish being banned because of their release into nature, to basic cruelty to animals. Alligators, Pacus, and Piranhas cannot live in Chicagoland weather or waterways. Releasing them is torture and will lead to their untimely death.
On the flipside, the Lionfish is banned for sale in the aquarium trade in Florida because of people releasing them from their aquariums. They have now overrun the reefs and present massive ecological problems. The same thing happened with the Snakehead fish here in Illinois over a decade ago and they are still around to this day.
Furthermore, don’t we have enough to worry about when the Asian Carp and Bullhead Sharks team up to take over?
