Fishing

We met friends today at the local park. They have installed new playground equipment and the fancy schmancy rubberized ground cover. My only complaint is lack of shade but if I'll just look back a few posts, apparently I haven't yet learned that you can't please all the people all the time.


After we played a while, we decided to take a walk and went around where the beautiful pond is with the fake blue-green tinted water. My friend bought some fish food from the self-serve gumball machine and, after freaking out about the ants now firmly entrenched on her hand, flung it out into the water. There it bobbed on top of the water like a...well, dead goldfish. No one attacked it and the food just floated. It reminded me of that line from Jurassic Park, "T. Rex doesn't want to be fed, he wants to hunt. Can't just… supress 65 million years of gut instinct." I suppose the fish agreed with me because, as much as our kids waited patiently, nothing happened.

Meanwhile, I see this as a great photo op. Kids feeding fish = cute, right? So I go on the other side and snap snap snap. Cute. Then I see the fish right near the edge of the pond where I'm standing. I point them out and the kids get very excited.

I must pause here and ask WHY do kids always think fish are really dumb and will eat anything you throw in the water? I've never been around kids who say, "Hey, that stick isn't fish food - they won't eat it"...but I digress.

So the kids start picking up pieces of grass and bark and twigs and tree leaves and throw them in the water. And shock of all shocks, the fish actually start jumping for the bark! They're splashing around and the kids are estatic about it. Meanwhile, the "fish food" that the city just made .50 off of is still bobbing around like pieces of styrofoam 5 feet away. Great city planning! Who knew fish would actually prefer bark?

My friend is handling the 4 mobile kids and the two strollers with our babies in them while I'm still snapping pictures away, trying not to fall in while getting the perfect angle. And I hear her say, "You'd better stop throwing in the bark. They might realize it's not food. After all, they *do* swim in schools."

Point taken.