So they're not lice. They're Black Spots. Readers who are better websearchers than I found apophallus brevis on the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife site (FishLab), and apophallus brevis is what I found on the trout I caught at Quimby Pond last week. The state's Fish Health Laboratory in Augusta says the black spots on the fish are "usually caused by a small immature larval trematode parasite," the aformentioned a.brevis.

Parasites have developed the most amazing survival strategies, and this one is no exception. The life cycle of a. brevis involves the fish-eating Common Loon, whose mouth plays unwitting host to the adult worm, which lays eggs which pass through the loon into the water where the eggs hatch into an intermediate stage, which finds a mollusc to live in (and sponge off) until it develops into something called a redia, which produces another Latin name, cercariae, and that Latin name goes out and catches a fish. And then it's heigh-ho the derry-oh, the loon takes a fish, and do you begin to detect a circular pattern here?

The fish scientists also tell us that a. brevis does not infect humans, that cooking the fish kills the parasite, and that if enough of the little buggers latch onto a trout they can kill it. As the trout I caught were fairly covered with black spots, and still fought like tigers, I assume they had not been attacked by enough parasites to cause mortal injury. But they were not a pretty sight. You would not take a fish like that to the prom.

With deep gratitude to the late Abby Holman, who recommended me for a fellowship, I'm off to Montana tomorrow to participate in a "High Country Expedition" as a Fellow of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources (IJNR). I'll be staying on a few extra days to fish. I probably won't get a chance to post a new entry until I'm back home in mid-June, but then I'll have plenty to say.

For those who followed the story of my Weegar canoe, in part the story of the untimely deaths of two remarkable people two years apart -- Andrew Weegar and his wife Abby Holman -- on Memorial Day I delivered the canoe to their daughter, eight-year-old Molly Weegar, on the Fayette farm where she grew up and now lives with her aunt Sarah and uncle Harold. Under the big maples in front of the house we ate a lovely picnic lunch, topped off with rhubarb pie baked by Andrew's mother, Nancy. Molly gave me a collage she had made, featuring her sitting in the canoe, and a beautiful handwritten letter of thanks; I will treasure both. Then Jeff Timm, who had planned to marry Abby in June, helped me lift the canoe off my truck. Jeff and Harold set the boat into a canvas cradle. I lifted Molly, a little blonde lightning-bolt of a girl, into the canoe that her father had built, and she sat on the cane seat which had been woven by her grandmother, and she smiled a smile that paid for the canoe many times over.