Response to, "Take This Fish and Look at It".

    Many things in life seem so simple, so plain, but when looked at and truly analyzed, these things can be found full of intricate details that prove to really be quite fascinating. In the case of the author, Mr. Scudder, it is in the form of a fish. To be more specific a Haemulon. In his tale, he depicts his start under a professor in which he was instructed to, well, ‘take this fish, and look at it.’ So he did just that. After a while, he had believed to have found all the details that the fish contained, yet when told to keep looking, he had found more. He spent days observing, drawing, and discovering all sorts of missed information. This story can easily be applied to many situations in the world, and general lives as well, for many details can be, and are often, overlooked. Take cleaning for example. One can clean an entire house, and after a day or even a few hours, find dust in a crevice that they had missed. It could be between two books on their vast bookshelf, perhaps a bowl that had been sitting in their cupboard for ages. No matter how one look at things, it can take time to truly see what is there. Even after his study of the Haemulon and it’s family, the author’s study had proven to stay with him, even in his general depiction of fish. I find it nice that the author was able to use his experience to develop his entomological studies as well.