THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 7, 1994 TAG: 9410060204
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
I was talking to my friend Jane the other day about the fish pond that she and her husband Woody had put in a few weeks back.
``So, how's the fish pond doing?'' I asked innocently enough.
``Don't ask,'' Jane replied, ``or I just might tell you.''
``Go ahead,'' I suggested, ``it might make for a good column.''
``Why not?'' Jane said. ``Someone might as well get a few laughs out of this. I sure haven't had too many.''
It seems that Jane and Woody bought one of those preformed fish ponds for the backyard of their Norfolk house.
As Jane explained it, that's the fancy name for something that's big and blue, looks a lot like a baby bathtub and is meant to add atmosphere to your back yard.
Anyway, they bought a form, a water circulating device, a bunch of nice aquatic plants, lots of cement and gravel and a quartet of goldfish named Goldie, Spots, Little Bit and Big 'Un.
Technically, the swimming stock are koi, which according to Jane, is nothing more than the Japanese name for carp. Whatever they are, they're big and gold, except for Little Bit who's little and gold and Spots, who has a bad case of fish acne.
Woody was so pleased with the project that he decided to add a decorative touch to the pond - a large rock, which he bought on the other side of the water and trucked home through the bridge-tunnel in the back of his pickup.
Actually, large doesn't quite do the rock justice. ``It weighs 680 pounds,'' Jane sighed.
With a little ingenuity and a lot of help from Jane and a crow bar, Woody managed to get the monster settled beside the fish pond. Using a little more ingenuity, Woody got the whole thing fixed up real pretty.
``Just like a little mountain pond with a water fall,'' Jane explained.
At first everything went along fine. The plants thrived, the fish swam and the water re-circulated happily down the rock and into the pond.
Then Jane and Woody began to notice something strange. The water level in the pool was dropping. When it got down to where even Little Bit was touching bottom and top at the same time, Jane and Woody knew they had a problem.
Obviously someone had to locate the source of the problem, and obviously that someone was going to be Woody. With help from Jane, of course.
Together, they netted the fish and transferred them to the bath tub, which Woody had cleaned out with Clorox.
``Did they survive?'' I asked. ``Those four would survive anything,'' Jane answered in a tone that suggested she's just as soon they not be quite so hardy.
``Even the cats?'' I asked.
``Even the cats,'' she replied, then went on to tell me how she had closed the tub enclosure to keep the two species separated.
``The cats did get a little upset when they kept hearing splashes from the other side of the glass and they didn't know what was causing them,'' Jane added.
She admitted to being a little upset, too. ``That's the tub that I normally use,'' she explained, ``and it took Woody a while to find and correct the problem.''
``How long?'' I asked.
About three weeks,'' she answered.
It seems that the pool's edge hadn't sealed properly at the spot where the rock was. In order to fix the problem, Woody had to dismantle the intake system and move the waterfall.
When he took the form out to work on it, the boulder fell into the hole. Using a 3-ton jack, Woody gradually lifted the rock, slid boards under it, lifted some more and, with Jane's help, placed more boards underneath.
Just that part of the work took a full day. Then there was the re-cementing to do and the re-graveling and all the other REs that are involved when you take something apart and put it back together.
Finally the moment came when Jane could unceremoniously dump the koi or carp or whatever you want to call them back in the pool, clean out the tub, load it up with bubble bath and take a nice long soak.
``I needed to let my muscles relax after doing all that work,'' she said, ``and a shower just doesn't hack it.''
``And how are the fish doing?'' I asked.
``They're OK except they're not eating very much,'' she told me. ``But the man at the fish store says that's normal this time of year. They're ready to hibernate.''
``Back home in Maine, goldfish freeze solid in their ponds all winter,'' I told her, ``and then they're just fine in the spring.''
``Great,'' Jane said without enthusiasm. I got the feeling that she'd just as soon Goldie, Spots, Little Bit and Big 'Un find a home in someone else's backyard, take their 680-pound boulder with them and stay the heck out of her bath tub. by CNB