The Great (Stocked) Trout Migration

 (This is intended to be read as if in the voice of Sir David Attenborough. If read in any other affect, it will not be received as intended)

In a concrete raceway swims a mature rainbow trout. This trout, like many others it shares it's current artifice with, lives a most peculiar life. A scheduled one, in fact. A couple times a day, always at precisely the same times, the trout partakes in a massive feeding frenzy, the likes of which are extremely rare in the wild. Fish froth at the surface on schedule as their prey, little brown pellets, enters the water. It and many of it's brethren, were all conceived, born, and reared in a highly regimented manor, by a specialized species known as "hatchery manager". The hatchery manager is at the whims of the trout as much as the trout are at the whims of the manager. He must keep them alive and growing before the migration, and they must feed, move, and breed when he says. It's an unusual sort of symbiosis. 

 This trout's schedule dictates that is must soon make his final migration, though he doesn't know it or even want to. His majestic grey and speckled sides and short nubby fins ripple as he navigates the habitat he's known his whole short life, flanked on three sides by concrete and by netting above. It's a trout's dream... consistent water temperature, regular and fattening meals, and little fear of a predator. It is a little crowded, though...

(60 seconds of seconds of b-roll of trout bouncing off of each other in a hatchery raceway set to dramatic music)

Unlike many species before they migrate, the trout has no urge, no drive to leave. But suddenly one day it is swept into a big net. Flopping franticly in a pile of it's own tank mates, the trout only knows that this is different. Not where it could be headed or what is in store. But this is, in fact, what he was born for. It is his final purpose. from the net the trout enters a tank, similar in some ways to the one he just came from but smaller, darker, and metallic. and this one is on wheels. When the lid is closed the trout is plunged into darkness. Soon, there was a sensation of moving. Nobody knows how a trout perceives the passage of time, but some say this journey feels like an eternity. In reality it is only a about 30 minutes before the lid to the tank is opened again. In a net plunges, and wriggles trout leave the vessel. The trout are frantic, and our little friend cannot see where his tank mates are going. He just knows that with each scoop of the net, there are fewer and fewer. After a few nets full, the lid closes again, and the travel continues. Next stop... the wheeled tank parks atop a concrete bridge. The hatchery workers hop out and repeat the process. Once again the trout are startled be the abrupt introduction of light when the lid opens, and once again a net enters the water. This time, it's our trout's turn. He flops in the net deliriously as it is passed between hatchery workers. Then he is dumped most unceremoniously off the side of the bridge, plunging ten feet into his new habitat and the endpoint of this admittedly short migration. This place is completely foreign to the trout, though someplace so far back in his genetic code that is barely gasps a whisper are the relics of his ancestors, trout that lived their whole lives in places like this. 

(b-roll of a wild trout with it's brighter colors, intact fins, and robust musculature swimming past the stocked trout)

This place is wholly unfamiliar. The food comes in forms the trout has never seen, and at times that seem random. There is no protective net and the trout watches some of his hatchery mates get taken by a predator just hours after reaching the destination... a heron, merciless in it's intense desire for trout, stabs a few. Incidentally, he is intended for a predator. A very specific one. The trout has no immediate fear because this predator looks exactly like the hatchery manager he could always trust. And that's the cruel trick. This predator comes bearing snacks. The trout, growing hungrier with each passing hour after the regularly scheduled feeding should have occurred, hears something enter the water and goes to see. Its a pellet, not brown like the ones he usually eats. It's bright green... but has a profuse and enticing flavor, so it must be food. The trout spends his final moments thrashing helplessly on the end of a line as a vest-wearing man sitting on a bucket reels him in. 

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