Forget the Garden Gnomes Go for Garden Eels –

Pirie Rain of Gifts  – Fishy Rain in Banff

If you go down to the shed today you may be in for a small surprise, as was Kevin in Banff in Aberdeenshire this August. Our Kev found that it had rained eels, some 75 of them in his garden and they turned out to be sand eels. He lives some 550 metres from the local beach and a water spout or some other weather feature had sucked the poor little eels out of the water and deposited them in his garden. The sand eels are eel shaped fish and not eels and they live on sandy banks fairly close to land. So unlike the hardy eel they couldn’t survive the experience on land.

Look Out of the Window – Is it Raining Fish? Or Fish Fingers.

But falls of fish have been reported inland since the times of the Bible.  Sometimes they are whisked up to such heights that they come down frozen, but no fish fingers so far! One ancient Greek Heraclides from the second century B.C. reported a rain of frogs.  A bit more recently a report from Florida had a rain of golf balls linked to a waterspout crossing over a golf course. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, very strange things can be swept up in a tornado and deposited miles from origin. Most without a wicked witch though! When the industrial revolution came to Scotland sheep were often turned by sooty rain from the factories of Lanarkshire.

No Unexpected Fall of Frogs

But there is nothing strange or misplaced here at James Pirie. You won’t get, unless the postman has been at the whacky baccy, get anything unexpected other than what you order. If you want wildlife in your living room, don’t wait for an unexpected wind try the loveliness that id Border Fine Arts, where you’ll get lots of offers and many admiring glances. You can even get a black sheep, but not darkened by sooty rain.

https://www.jamespirie.com/collectibles/border-fine-arts.html