Proud to be eel-free and wide awake

Many terrific images swipe across my inside eyelid photo display after my trip to Oregon. There's the requisite view of the PDX carpet. My grandson watching an earthworm on the wet pavement. A first big boy barbershop haircut with no meltdown! Toddler soccer class with kiddies running in circles until they fell over. Marshmallow celebrations with a little nudist after potty-training victories.

In the more haunting reel, there are eels. National Geographic documentary nocturnal eels slithering over wet grass. Eels from Maine raised in China for sale to Japan. And all just before our staff lunch at a Japanese restaurant! Can you say "bento box", boys and girls?

More alarming than the prospect of eels in your lunch! More terrifying than eels in your backyard while you are shivering out there barefooted waiting for your seven-pound schnorkie to pee! Can it be? Yes, the passenger ahead of me on the airport shuttle bus began yelling, "Wake him up! Wake him up! Wake the driver up!" This awakened all of us, and is not something you ever want to hear. Thank heaven the driver was not asleep, and didn't go ballistic over the accusation.

Slightly less troubling is the revelation Sigmund Freud spent four weeks dissecting hundreds of eels in an inconclusive search for their male reproductive organs. That's gotta warp a guy!

Next month I'll be teaching gyotaku fish prints. We will use fake rubber Texas native freshwater fish, not the real deal. James Prosek is the artist in the National Geographic Nature documentary making the really cool gyotaku eel print art.

The best places for eels are in crossword puzzle clues on the last pages of morning newspapers with a cup of coffee, black:

• elusive ones
• slippery sorts
• snakelike fish
• smoked in England
• poached in Maine
• enigma to scientists
• sacred to Maoris
• unagi in bars
• chopped in dam turbines
• sushi staple
• nocturnal slitherers over land

Don't let the eels drive the bus!

© 2014 Nancy L. Ruder