Summer means sandals, and sandals mean pedicures. You can soak your feet in hot water and Epsom salts, file them with a pumice and trim off the really thick calluses with a miniature cheese slicer. Or you can have them attacked by carp.

Just when you thought grooming couldn't get weirder, there's a whole new chapter in the book "Bizarre Things Women Will Do To Look Pretty." (Take 30 percent off when you order the beauty trilogy, which also includes "Bizarre Things Women Have Done To Look Pretty" and "Doesn't This Look Better With A Hole In It?")

Combining two words never before joined in the history of the English language, a salon in suburban Washington, D.C., offers "fish pedicures."

Why would fish need pedicures? They rarely wear flipflops.

These aren't pedicures for fish. They're pedicures by fish. If someone can train the fish to apply polish and offer you water or herbal tea, a lot of salon workers could be out of a job.

Here's what happens: You stick your feet in a tank of water, and really small carp known as doctor fish swim up and nibble all the dead skin off them, including that monster callus on your big toe that makes you wonder if you've been trying to sleepdance "Swan Lake" in the garage.

(Please note the correct spelling: "Callous" is an adjective that means "carelessly insensitive" whereas "callus" is a noun that means "carp chow.")

I'm not surprised dermabrasion by fish is possible. I read somewhere that, on old wooden ships, sailors foolish enough to sleep out on deck on a hot night would wake to find cockroaches had eaten away the calluses on their feet. I don't know if that's true, but I bet it ruined your next meal.

I'm also not surprised that fish now do the best job of purging tootsies of dead skin. Human pedicurists used to be very thorough with the cheese-slicer implement, a little razor that shaved calluses down in layers.

That's right, gentlemen: You grouse about shaving hairs off your faces with razors, and we have actually been shaving our own skin off with them. By the way: You guys wear sandals and flipflops in summer too, I've noticed. What are you doing to make your feet attractive and smooth?

I figured.

Let me ask you this: If you enjoy fishing, have you considered using your own feet as bait? I'm sure that if you wiggled your toes you could save yourself a fortune in night crawlers.

Anyway, the cheese slicers disappeared a few years ago when state regulators suddenly had doubts that they were sanitary. So far, regulators are totally fine with a carp's mouth.

Pedicures haven't been as thorough since the razors were replaced by wimpy files; I, for one, now have calluses that have not been completely eradicated since the first Bush administration. I mean Poppy's.

So I can believe that fish are willing and able to do the very best job of clearing away all that thick, dry, snaggy dead skin and leaving feet pristine and radiant. I just can't quite believe there are large quantities of women willing to pay for aquatic creatures to chew on their extremities.

(The fish don't have any teeth, but they can deliver a heck of a suck.)

What do I know? The manager of the salon claims to have fed the fish with 5,000 happy customers. I found a leech on my heel once and almost had to be hospitalized.

The Associated Press reports the salon, Yvonne Hair and Nails, has more than 1,000 doctor fish, though only 100 are on duty in each pedicure tank at a time. (Management wanted to cut that to 80, but the fish have a strong union.)

True, there's no danger to living skin because it's too tough for a predator without teeth. I don't know what they eat in their natural habitat (river basins in the Middle East); I got too disturbed to continue my research when it occurred to me they might be bottom feeders.

As ghastly as that sounds, there are already spas in the Far East and Eastern Europe where you can immerse your whole body in a tank full of these skin-suckers. I never even liked to swim in lakes because I might touch something icky, like a catfish or one of my cousins.

When I go to a salon, I want to think Cinderella, not Discovery Channel Shark Week.

On the other hand, maybe it's only fair. I've eaten a lot of dead fish in my time. I really like a nice piece of salmon. Do the doctor fish consider us a delicacy? Are our feet a treat?

Let me guess: They taste like chicken.