Gentle readers, when last my virtual pen left electronic paper, the walls had collapsed on one of my backyard ponds. I then had to rescue the goldfish from the damaged pond and pack them into the neighboring pond, but the goldfish turned sullen because of the overcrowding.
Then yet another delivery of fish arrived. These were multi-colored, gloriously hued sunfish, that I’d hoped to keep separately from the goldfish. I knew the gold fish would be jealous of the sunfish’s vivid colors, and the sunfish were reputed to be aggressive game fish who’d likely maul my poor aquarium goldfish.
I’d paid $100 at $1/inch for the sunfish, meaning I’d be getting 12 sunfish, each about eight inches long. They’d dwarf my goldfish, who were mostly about 4 inches long, near as I could tell.
I thought I could just slip the sunfish in unnoticed, but the goldfish had somehow obtained a dossier on my obsession with the sunfish, and the goldfish were getting prepared for battle in a mass meeting. Some of what follows is true, or could be.
“They’re coming, the game fish coming!” screamed a small finny scout, as it swam rapidly, into the mass meeting of all the goldfish.
“Okay brothers and sisters,” began Big Jim, the largest goldfish, who is jet black, ”Remember, we will be fighting game fish. It’s true all our ancestors were aquarium goldfish. But WE are not aquarium fish anymore, WE are feral pond fish, and this is OUR pond, WE can withstand poor water quality and low oxygen, and the game fish cannot. WE know every nook of this pond! WE are NOT aquarium fish, we are POND FISH!” Big Jim emphasized, his voice gaining strength.”
“POND FISH! POND FISH!” the dozens of assembled goldfish responded loudly.
“All units to the Northwest quadrant!” Big Jim shouted, and the black and gold goldfish schooled and headed to the confrontation.
Meanwhile, I had unpacked the sunfish from the ice chest, and removed the bag of cold water that held them. They were frisky, but not as brightly colored as I imagined, and they certainly weren’t eight inches long; more like four. I poured them into the pond.
They darted into the murky water, sneering as they chanted.
“Game fish, we’re game fish, game fish all the way, from our first feeder minnow to our last dying day!”
The sunfish stopped abruptly. Several goldfish blocked their path between the dense underwater plants. The goldfish waved their fins, churning up silt and clouding views.
The head sunfish turned to his partner.
“Looks like they got us a little reception party of feeder goldfish,” he said, “Good, I’m hungry.”
Then Big Jim swam up.
“You the fresh fish? You are the sorriest ass excuse for an 8 inch fish I’ve ever seen,” Jim responded.
“Yeh? Well your momma’s a carp!”*
“Yeh? Your daddy’s a blue gill!”**
And the fighting started. The water seemed to boil, and then ceased.
“Where’d those sunfish go?” Big Jim yelled after a few minutes.
Old Gold, the largest gold goldfish, replied.”They took off for the cinder blocks under the Irises.”
“So they’re hunkered down in the Iris Barrens? That’s where they always go.”
Big Jim and Old Gold called all of the goldfish back into a meeting.
“Listen up! We’re gonna teach that hooman a lesson. He brought in those sunfish because he wanted prettier fish. We’ll show him prettier. From now on, no goldfish flaunts their pretty colors where the hooman can see them. As long as the sunfish are here, we’re on strike!”
I’d really botched the situation now. The goldfish now hid invisibly under the lily leaves, only darting out for chunks of food. Just a week earlier the goldfish would follow me as I walked around the pond and would have eaten from my fingers.
And the storied sunfish? They’d hunkered out of sight amid a jumbled pile of mossy underwater bricks, pushed in by generations of raccoons. I hadn’t seen a sunfish since putting them in the pond.
In other words, I’d tried to possess two groups of pretty fish, and ended up with zero, all the fish were either on strike or in hiding. So I took the historic position of any boss faced with a strike; I sent in the riot police to make arrests, and open dossiers on the ringleaders. Unfortunately, while the Protein and Fiber Police did break up the fishes’ demonstrations and picket lines, the fish were holding out.
In 2005, I had put in 30 goldfish, all dark and ½ inch long. Now, thirteen years later, they numbered 128. About 10 were bright orange or orange/black, and the rest were dark. Most were 4-5 inches long, but two were over 6 inches long. They’d increased their population by 300%, even after a decade of attacks from bullfrogs, coons, possums, skunks and herons that usually targeted the larger apex breeders of the goldfish pod.
Yet a pond with that many goldfish lacks diversity. It will end up with little in it but goldfish and plants. They’ll eat anything smaller; tadpoles, dragonfly larvae, even smaller fish.
END OF PART TWO
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End notes
*Goldfish (Carassius auratus) are a member of the carp family.
**Sunfish will breed with blue gills, which are closely related pan fish.