A two-headed fish tale being told at Kamloops Christian School
By MARK MACDONALD
Mar 07 2007

A little fish that has captured the imagination of students at Kamloops Christian School (KCS) has beat the odds — again.

The salmon fry became the talk of the school when it hatched and teachers and students noticed in disbelief two heads protruding from one body.

Maybe the fish, aptly named Two Head by the students, was shy of the gawking onlookers or just adjusting its four eyes to its tank in the school hallway, but it fell into a deep hibernation.

“They just sat on the bottom,” said Nikki Gerrits, whose Grade 2 class monitors the tank full of fry. “So we thought they were dead.”

That’s right — they, as in two.

“It is two fish, but they are like two conjoined twin fish,” explained KCS’s associate principal Karen Chupa.

“We’ve been kind of waiting for them to die, but they haven’t.”

But just as Gerrits was preparing the toilet bowl, this week the fish showed signs of life.

“I was checking on the fish with one of the students and it was just sitting in the corner and we thought it was dead,

“But then its gills moved,” she said.

Now Two Head swims vigorously, if somewhat awkwardly, since the two bodies appear to swim in opposite directions, around the tank — to the amazement of Gerrits’ class.

The fish are part of the school’s salmon project, a joint venture between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), Gerrits’ class and Monique Kourtzman’s Grade 5 class.

The DFO donated the eggs and the students took charge of the incubation process. The students will release the fish into the wild in May.

Whether Two Head will join his comrades remains to be seen.

A fish biologist told the class its likely one body will die and fall off, leaving its twin to explore the great blue deep alone.

“It’s a two-headed fish. One fish is alive and one fish is dead,” said Grade 2 student Noah Kourtzman, with his nose pressed against the tank.

But Two Head has more immediate problems. Come feeding time, the lack of co-operation between Two Head’s two halves leaves both stomachs empty as the other fish gobble up the food.

Still, the future looks bright for Two Head. As it careened erratically around the tank, Gerrits remarked its the most movement she’s ever seen out of the fish.


Teacher’s assistant Leanne Kohnke
tries to capture a two-headed fish
that is the talk of Kamloops Christian.
The amazing fish is a bit too small to
be captured by the camera, but it’s in
this tank, swimming merrily with its
peers.