February is usually the time of year when many Alaskans' cerebral synapses start to misfire because of an elongated deprivation of tactile stimuli involving fishing equipment.

They start seeing things like the Froot Loops schooling up and circling their cereal bowls, or they purposely dig through to the bottom of their freezer just to fight with a huge package of halibut stuck to the bottom of the appliance. It's a bad time of year, and for a couple minutes last week I thought that I had the syndrome.

The first disturbing moment came when I was perusing the Anchorage Daily News and spotted what looked like pictures of futuristic shopping malls superimposed on some old scale model of a mining town built for a Lionel train set. They turned out to be artist renditions of a proposed new capitol for Juneau.

I was stunned. I thought for sure that they were architectural plans for the airport terminal that would naturally be required to house and support the governor's new wish-jet. I had figured if he and his Public Safety commissioner could con the Legislature into buying the duo their own status symbol, they would certainly throw in a terminal. We wouldn't want the guv and comish to get their clubs wet on the way to play golf in Arizona. Heck, if they had any room left over, they might even take a prisoner with them if it didn't interfere with their tee time.

But I was wrong, Juneauites were actually try to sell Alaskans on supporting edifices that looked more like launching pads for the Starship Enterprise than standard legislative buildings with mobile wet bars and cigar sampling rooms. To make things worse, the design they settled on looked like Godzilla had deposited a very personal souvenir as he passed through the burg in search of cruise ships to gnaw on.

Either that or it is the largest commemorative structure honoring the Easter egg that I've ever seen. I'm not sure what's going on in that burg but they are either off their meds or need a serious infusion of them.

My second disquieting interlude came when I, once again, was picking through some old ADNs trying to find columns and articles that didn't lean so far left that I'd fall off the couch trying to read them. Suddenly, I spotted "Governor is asked to pardon king salmon."

I should have stopped there and went on a very long beach walk.

But no, I set it aside for further consideration and picked up another edition where a letter to the editor was effusing the fact "that some fish gather information by eavesdropping on others, and some use tools. ... Fish even like to play. ..." My mind reeled. CIA chinooks? Saw-wielding silvers? Rugby-playing reds?

I snatched up the original article to see if the person quoted therein was the same alien being that authored the letter. It was not to be. The quotes came from two equally dedicated and/or deranged PETAettes who seemed to believe that fish have complex social structures, long-term memories and are interesting individuals. (Nice try, but I'll bet they wouldn't date one.)

All this from a brain trust organization that addressed their concerns to: Murkowski, governor of Alabama. Sorry, wishful thinking aside about the guv, when it comes to the mental well-being of fish they come across as having as much credibility as Michael Moore endorsing the Bow Flex Machine.

I think those PETAettes should spend the spawning season in Alaska campaigning "to stop all Alaskan fishing for king salmon." Personally, I don't think that they'll last a week.

From what I hear, the halibut are already highly annoyed that they weren't included in the pardon. I can't even repeat what the other species of trout have had to say about it, much less the hacked off herring and sulking sculpin. I'm surprised that the obvious Mensa members from the planet PETA "fish empathy project" didn't recognize that such exclusion could lead to massive protests in the waters of Alaska if such a limited amnesty was issued. All we need is a bunch of intellectual activist fish picketing our fishing spots.

Come to think of it. Why not? It would be a typical summer in Homer where only the wickedly weird seems normal.

Nick C. Varney can be reached at wufferdawg@hotmail.com or anywhere that serves a great surf-n-turf meal.