I might have forgotten some expositional stuff way back in Quarter Share, but...
How is it that Otto and the others know what all of these Earth animals looked like and what they're called? Was it from pictures and stories, or had St. Cloud been so thoroughly Terraformed that Earth fauna thrived in the wild? I'm only about 2/3 through
South Coast at the moment, but I don't recall that any of the creatures carved as whelkies ever appear in real life on St. Cloud ("on camera", as it were). There are sheep, but I don't recall any sheep whelkies.
I don't recall any insects by name.
Pigs? Did someone have bacon? I forget. Oh - there were
eggs, so presumably there are chickens, unless they're from an alien bird. Or are those eggs a type of giant fish roe, which were given the more familiar name of "eggs" in order to make a restaurant menu more pleasing to off-worlders?
In contrast, I don't recognise
any of the fish names (which appear aplenty), except for the rather common and generic "whitefish" name. Okay, some of the molluscs and crustaceans too.
There's "Seahorse", but that's just the name of a vessel. Otto compares his Mom's job to being like a shark, but no actual sharks show up out at sea. (up to episode 13)
If these Earth animals are indeed running around, were there no indigenous species to displace? Besides the fish, I mean.
Or was the whole planet subjected to years-long aerial spraying of
handwavium to grease the rails for the story, and allow the animals to exist? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)
