Carp

Photo courtesy Flickr

After a little too much coffee on Sunday morning, Pard and I started talking about our love of guinea pigs, and what a joy it is to hang out with one that is not in a cage. Pigs are inherent comedians, like parakeets. Only my distaste for buying a slave animal for entertainment keeps me from having them as pets.

Briefly, I visualized giving guinea pigs the basement for their very own, until reality set in. Then I recalled the ultimate home aquarium, a Rainier Valley merchant’s koi run.

I have not had the pleasure of living with one of these “water beings”, but I know enough to know that the breeders are protective, the Asian art museum’s collection is graceful to watch, and that at least one koi does not tolerate impertinence. Pard and I took our son to a koi show when he was small, and I wandered amid waist-high tanks of colorful fish. Recalling a New Yorker cartoon of a matron addressing the fish she had on a leash, I leaned over and recited “Izzum mommy’s widdle carp?!” to one of the captive swimming audience. The fish jumped up and bit my fingers, giving me an electric fright and a good splash to boot. The owner, who was standing by, said, “He does that.”

Maasi’s fish store devoted the back half of their one-story building to koi. Cement boundaries like a toboggan run, had been built up directly onto the cement floor, and juvenile fish raced happily around a generous serpentine circuit.

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