Friday, August 17, 2012

NIMBY

I was over at my parent’s house the other day and noticed that there was some floating debris in the fish pond:



It turns out my dad was furiously protecting his grossly obese koi from an opportunistic osprey that was perched directly above the pond. My Papa likes osprey more than anybody I know but he didn’t take kindly to them poaching from his fish pool. 

I don’t blame him - We’ve had those particular koi for 15 years. Back in their younger days they were pretty cute: for a while I had them coming at the ringing of a bell. And then they became so food obsessed that they’d simply show up anytime someone was in the vicinity. And now? They’ll come up and bite fingers in the hopes that somehow they’ll end up with something edible. 

Predictably, they are enormously rotund. They are the walruses of the koi community.

That osprey would have been one lucky bird.