My uncle, Tom, and my aunt, Terry (Therresa, though no one ever calls her that) have a turtle pond in the back yard. Occasionally, we refer to it as the White Trash Koi pond, because it's made from stock troughs, and it doesn't actually have any koi in it... just turtles, goldfish, mollies, guppies, and so on.

Well, from time to time, Tom takes it down to a really low water level, cleans out the filters, and pulls the turtles out to check their shells and whatnot. Yesterday, while doing this, he discovered The Plecostomus That Ate Tucson.

So Terry decided that it would be a shame to let it die off as the water got colder, and they went out and got a twenty gallon aquarium.

In past years, we've just let the fish die off in the winter, and in the spring, we buy twenty or thirty bucks worth of fish, and dump 'em in, and they breed, and by the end of fall, there's a zillion fish in there. Also occasionally things like ghost shrimp or little crabs, or crayfish, or whathaveyou.

But, as I say, T&T bought a 20 gallon aquarium and various things to make it work. They filled it with water transfered from the turtle pond, and commenced to trying to catch interesting fish out of the pond... and failing miserably.

So Tom called me, and I came over, and within an hour, I'd caught everything he wanted and put it in the aquarium for him... the giant plecostomus (8 inches, give or take), marbled mollies, 'those orange fish,' and three crayfish.

Tom was amazed at my ability to catch fish. He attributed it to my lack of interest in fishing; suggested that the fish could somehow sense that.

Me, I attribute it to paitence, and the fact that fish aren't very bright.

So, we caught fish, and transfered them to the aquarium, making sure to leave a fair number still in the pond. If it's a mild winter, some of them will survive until next year. If it's not... well, we'll still have a starter population inside.

Tom and Terry have four inside cats... Miranda, Duncan, Lysander and Ariel. (And you wondered where I got my literary pretentions?) Miranda, who is the odd cat out, in that she's black while the others are all a subdued cream-and-coffee shorthair tortoise shell, found the aquarium fascinating. She was sitting in front of it for quite some time, her tail twitching, as she tried to figure out how to get in... she'd stare at the front, and try to hook her paw around to the side, only to be frustrated by the glass.

Don't worry... there's a lid on the tank.

Now I'm at work; in a little while, I'll be taking off to go have dinner with T&T and M&M&M&M&I. Yay for family.