When you see a Big Mouth Billy Bass mounted on the wall, running away isn’t a bad idea. We never would have thought of using one as a theft-deterrent system, but police say that a burglar ran out of a store when he or she activated the singing fish by walking past it. Naturally, the store was a bait shop.

The electronic fish can be set to burst into song whenever someone walks past, if you are a reprehensible person. At least it’s appropriate at a store that sells fishing supplies, and the owner had set up the fish to activate whenever someone walked in the door. Including when a potential burglar broke in.

“[W]hen I tried to close the door and it wouldn’t close at all,” the owner told TV station KTTC. “I just knew that Billy Bass had done his job, and let somebody know that [the store] wasn’t just empty or somethin’.”

The burglar took off without stealing anything. Well done, Billy! This may be the first documented case of one of these things being useful for any purpose.

In case you haven’t had the privilege of encountering one of these in the last few decades, here’s a video of a Billy in action:

Singing Fish Spooks Burglar [KTTC]

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