The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

If you think 101 Dalmatians is impressive, you should see 103 carved fish.

That's how many wooden fish sculptures Tom Schirm, a habitat biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, has carved over the last 25 years. Considering that each sculpture takes between 80 and 200-plus hours, that's a lot of time with both hand and power carving tools, airbrushes, and paint to turn several pieces of exotic hardwood into not only a fish, but the habitat in which it lives.

Because, you see, even the rocks around which the fish is swimming have to be carved from wood.

"In each composit...