Something in the Water

Last night from our balcony on the 13th floor we watched a gorgeous sunset. Then we noticed the water. It looked strange. In patches it was a different color than we had ever seen. Our first thought was, "Oh no, the oil is here." But then we noticed the birds. There were rain clouds in the area, and we had been experiencing off an on thunderstorms all day. Johan thought for a moment that perhaps there was rain falling just in those patchy areas because the water was rippling. We decided to go down to the water for a better look.

When we got to the water the sun had nearly set, but we could see that it was churning. The boys and Johan walked right in. They announced that the water felt like "slimy popcorn." There were literally millions of these tiny fish swimming everywhere. The boys could just dip their hands into the water and come up with several. Here C holds one to show us what they look like:



These little guys were everywhere. The sunlight was mostly gone, this next picture doesn't do justice to the massive amount of little fish out there. The silvery things towards the top of the picture are the fish, not the brown stuff toward the bottom, those are just leaves and wood. I think we had scattered a lot of the fish by the time we took this picture because their initial concentration was much more dense.



Here is K with a couple more:



It was getting very dark, so it was difficult to see what was in the water. K, who picks up everything anyway and thinks that just about all of it is a treasure to behold was just reaching down into the water and picking things up. In New Orleans I had to tell him not to pick up anymore trash because we didn't know who it had belonged to or where it had been. K ran over to Nana and me and he excitedly, almost breathlessly announced, "I just picked something up, and it was hard and had a long tail." He paused here, perhaps for dramatic effect, then, "I think it was either a ray or a horseshoe crab." We responded with the appropriate, "Wow, that is cool K!" But I don't think either one of us genuinely believed there was ray or horseshoe crab swimming around that he just happened to scoop up in the dark. K then scanned the water again and shouted, "There it is!"


We used the camera and held down the picture button so that the red light that comes on just before the flash would illuminate the water better. We were shocked. There it was. C and Johan came running over to see what all the excitement was about. C wanted Johan to pick it up. Johan wasn't excited about picking it up. None of us knew if it had a barb. K encouraged Johan by pointing out that he had already picked it up and that it hadn't hurt him. Johan obliged, but we all worried about inadvertently hurting it, so we decided to just watch him.