Unlikley, but...
Many moons ago now, I was doing that inexplicable young teenager thing of wandering around with no particular purpose. I used to live in a quaint but insular seaside town (the most northerly town in England, to be exact), and there was a pathway that followed an old disused railway line. This pathway followed, in part, the line of the river mouth, and my mate and I were just aimlessly walking and chatting about nothing in particular, getting slightly damp from the constant, grey drizzle. And looking for discarded grot mags – we once found an impressive haul in a plastic bag there and were hoping that lightening would strike twice. Not today, though. However, we did find something completely unexpected.

We spotted something lying on the path a few metres ahead… on getting closer we realised that it was a flatfish. Now, although the path followed the course of the river, it was in fact, about 400 metres away from the actual waterline. It was also uphill of the river, so quite how a flatfish got all the way up there is a bit of a mystery. Because of the wet ground and constant drizzle, the fish was actually still alive – a fact we became aware of when, bending down to poke it with a stick, it flapped impressively on the pavement.

Not being nasty evil fish torturing delinquents, we managed to scoop it up and get it back to the mouth of the river, where we were able to place it gently into the water. We watched for what seemed an age as the fish just lay there. Were we too late? Had it snuffed it?

About a minute later it jerked its body, and swam off into the murky depths of the North Sea. Where it probably ended up in a trawlerman’s net, but it’s the principle that counts I think.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 6 Nov 2008, 15:49, Reply)