Okay, maybe not carp. More like trout. I was asked to gut a fish today. First time I did it myself, and it was a triple order. Three trouts to kill for a beginner is quite the task. One of the meat guys taught me how to gut a fish, and I remembered each step. But when it came to application, I fell short.
First, I pulled the fish out of the water slowly, so it thrashed about while it was halfway immersed in the tank, splashing the customers with possibly filthy water. Yum.
I dumped the three fishies in a sink, and grabbed the first one. Took me a few tries with a chain mesh glove, but I finally picked one up. The way to deliver a quick death is to stick your finger through its gills to the other side and snap the neck backwards. I stuck my finger in all right, but I didn't pull hard enough. What ended up happening was I made it bleed profusely, squirting blood on the other fishies in the sink. Oh, cruel Jerry! I tried to bend its neck back, but it just wouldn't bend. I just made it squirt more blood.
Moments later, it finally stopped moving, so I plopped it onto the cutting board. With a firm grip, I held it flat on the board and scraped its scales off. It's alive! It thrashed out of my grip, spraying blood on the white walls of the seafood department. Oooh, pretty red dots. Gross. I repeated the previous step, and made it bleed some more. In my head I was thinking, "for your own sake, just die!" But it was a fighter, and it refused to obey my unspoken request. It sprayed blood all over the place. I had fish fluids on my glasses, in my hair, blood on my arms, everywhere. Nasty. I wasn't disgusted or on the verge of throwing up. I was feeling sorry for my victim. It was torture, and nothing less.
I couldn't grip it firm enough to slice it open, so I did what any newcomer would do: I paged for back-up on the p.a. Help arrived moments later, and deftly slayed the sea monsters.
It was a long day. Zee end.