The Story of Orca and Blue

Ah, Spring! The jonquils are blooming, the Siberian Iris are celebrating, tulips and rhubarb and just everything is coming back to life. That includes our little pond.

Over Winter, the inhabitants of our pond hibernate. In Spring, as the water temperature warms, they realize: we haven't eaten in MONTHS! Ravenous mouths greet us in the morning. Like Hoovers, the Koi skim the surface looking for morsels, and like back up vacuums, the goldfish cruise, waiting for goodies to come their way.

We've had these scaly pets for 5 years now. The koi (who were formerly called Jesus and Lazarus...more on that later) are now named Orca and Blue, because they strongly resemble large whales in the pond. The herd of goldfish are called: The Herd of Goldfish. Orca and Blue are VERY large now. Very, very large. Actually, so are the goldfish. We estimate Orca and Blue, purchased as babies of 3" or so, to be 20" long. If they were bass, they'd be 'keepers'. The goldfish, purchased for $.10 each when they were about 1" long are pushing 10". These are our original purchases. Not one fish croaked. Miraculously.

Orca and Blue have always had tenacity. When the 'pond gang' was new to us, and much smaller, we decided to net them out in Autumn and bring them inside to their Winter quarters: a child's wading pool that we kept in our basement. The wading pool was heated and filtered, and the growing fishies were blissfully happy throughout the Winter. We did the same for the second Winter, even though our two Koi, who were nameless at this point, were quite a bit larger. Larger fish can leap, and that's just what the two koi did during their Winter vacation: they left the safety of their pool to test the land. \

The first time this happened, we were right there, and were able to scoop up our would-be amphibians and put them back in the water. The second time, the koi were not quite so lucky. An unknown amount of time passed before we discovered both koi on the basement floor, dry to the touch and seemingly quite dead. Sadly, we placed them into the pool, barely hoping. We wiggled them back and forth to get their gills moving and ---VOILA! They began to swim, slowly and weakly, but they were alive. That is when they became Jesus and Lazarus.

That same day, we placed netting above the swimming pool to keep our adventurous koi in the water.

The following Winter, we tested their ability to survive as koi are supposed to over Winter. They did swimmingly, and they grew SO big, that their names have been changed to: Orca and Blue.