September 14, 2009

#7 in the How to Be a Cowgirl Series:
The Tale of the Mysterious Yellow Bellies

Something weird has been happening down at the lake. You may remember that we have been stocking it, you know with bream and bass and catfish and spoonbill catfish, which are really weird fish that won’t be able to reproduce but can get 6 foot long and live for about 200 years, but that’s another story for another day, and not the point of this one. The point of this one is that about 6 weeks or so ago, when it was so freakin hot down here in South Texas, after sticking our toes in that brown water, and thinking, geez, that’s really hot, we noticed that there was a distinctly odd aquatic animal thing going on. Tiny little fish, all over the pond, were coming to the surface, and turning and going back down in the murky brown water; very fast.

“This is bad. Really bad,” said Neil. (Neil says this a lot because he thinks it a lot, which is what I think a lot, but I think he thinks it more than I do, which is.. well you know.. bad, really bad). “We’re going to have a fish kill. I know it." He says it again. "This is bad, very bad.”

We all sat on the dock when it got cool enough to keep from passing out from the heat, which was about 10 pm at night and with flashlights trained on the lake, we watched, waiting for the inevitable fish kill to start. Bob had his rifle, just in case. The bats swooped around, not getting nearly their fair share of mosquitoes, and we watched. Up and quickly down, all over the lake, the tiny little fish made tiny little expanding water waves. They kind of looked like raindrops if you could think of it raining up from the bottom of the lake and hitting the underside of the water. “Dang, these things are hard to see!” I said. I lay down on the dock, my light raking across the pond, just about a half second too late every time to really see which fish was fixing to start the chain reacting fish kill episode. Despite the million or so little hits, it was impossible to try and predict were the next one was going to surface. We all came to the same conclusion about the same time: to quit darting our eyes all about and just stare at one patch of water. “They don’t look like they are dying,” Bob said, cigar glowing in the dark.

The next day I googled, ‘fish coming to surface quickly’. No problem with this search. “Piping is a behavior commonly seen prior to a fish kill in ponds and lake due to insufficient dissolved oxygen in the water column.” The pit of my stomach lurched and I didn’t want to read on. “Fish will gasp for air, as they come to the surface.” Visions of really murky watered gold fish bowls with particulate poo poo matter floating in them filled my head. Eminent goldfish death from early childhood memories were playing on my mind. Something didn’t seem just right though. These things weren’t hanging around at the surface, puckered up, hoping for spare oxygen molecules riding the meniscus between air and water.

The next weekend, there they were still doing it again, millions of them all day long. We sat on the dock and watched. “I think they are eating those tiny little minnows,” I announced proudly. “Yeah, they are just feeding,” everyone agreed triumphantly. We all sort of hung our heads knowing that wasn’t it. There had to be a fish kill in the future. There was no other explanation. I decided to bite the bullet. I went to Cody, our friendly county extensions agent. “Cody, these fish come to the surface, only for a second and then head back down.” “Oh no, he says immediately, his corpulent figure radiating impending grief, “You’re about to have a fish kill. It’s been happening all over the county. They don’t have any oxygen. It’s happening early morning, right? Photosynthesis doesn’t happen at night which is where a lake gets it oxygen, so when the fish use it up through the night, they start piping in the early morning.” “Well, no,” I say. “It’s all day long. For the last month.” He looks at me, the same way my mechanic does when I try to describe what’s wrong with my car and wanders off to see if there is a county extension bulletin he can copy for me.

We wait for the fish kill for the next two weeks. The only thing that happens is that although the number of top surface incidences remains the same, the fish seem to be getting a little bit slower and bigger, which means we have a slightly better chance of identifying them. That is turning out to be bad, very bad, because these things are really ugly. They have big flat yellow looking underbellies. “What did we put in this lake that had that ugly coloring,” Neil queries to know one in particular. They are looking more and more like some kind of weird freak of nature. We’ve been all about controlling whose in this lake and now not only is it clear we have never been in control, some weird air sucking, mud ugly thing has literally taken it over.

It’s been my habit this summer to attend to the plants and animals mid week, to get them through the hot summer. So last week I amble down to the pond, to make sure thousands of little fish bodies aren’t making an oil slick on the surface and from 20 yards I can still see the piping rippling the surface. I lay down on my tummy on the dock, peering over the edge of the edge, determined to solve the mystery once and for all, I train my eyes to one spot and watch. Geez, these things have huge, wide mouths. As they approach the top 3 inches of water, I see them, almost with menacing grins, charging to the surface. The first one flips over and heads down. “What the heck is that crap coming out of it’s butt”, I say to #12 who has ambled over to watch me. I watch and yep, two more have the same issues on their back end. That’s got to be bad, I think to myself, worried now that the pond may have some mysterious pollutant that has created life as we don’t know it. Another one, this one really much slower, turns and head to the bottom. Angling out away from his skinny little tail on either side are two long, languorously jointed, webbed legs. I get up stretch and smile, actually I startle old number 12 as I laugh out loud.

Our little pond is host to a vibrant, healthy population of the most beautiful wide mouthed, yellow bellies bullfrog tadpoles you could ever hope for. I call up Neil and tell him. “Really”, he says, his mind churning on how good this is. Tadpoles like healthy water. “Yeah, it’s really got the snake population in top form,” I tell him casually. “I just lifted up the john boat and there must have been 10 snakes under it.” Neil, quiet on the phone, as the movie plays out in this mind where hundreds, no thousands, heck the whole freakin population is consumed by bands of slithering snakes. He sees the future of our smiling, fat bodied, piping tadpoles. “This is bad, really bad,” I hear him think to himself.

But little were we to know that part of cowgirl training would necessitate a call to arms and certainly never one to ignore the call…yeah, I am all over this..

Next week #8 in the How to Be a Cowgirl Series: Snake Wranglin’ Janet

Bible verse of the week: Genesis 3:1-24 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” .

Quote of the week: “Up high, the flies are playing, And frolicking, and swaying. The frog thinks: Dance! I know You'll end up here below." Wilhelm Busch

2009 Happy Monday,