The fact that it is purple militates against it being a trout.

long-life milk

“What have you been doing?” “Tending thrashing-machine and wimbling haybonds, and saying ‘Hoosh!’ to the cocks and hens when they go upon your seeds, and planting Early Flourballs and Thompson’s Wonderfuls with a dibble.”

It is a case of 'epistemic drift' as defined by Kemeny (1999), in which discourses without firm disciplinary roots tend to misattend to facts and jump to misleading conclusions.