A Deceased Fish

I love my job. Its only drawback is that it takes me away from my sweet husband all week. All of my friends from school are tucked away being bad-mouthed by teens and doing paperwork for their internships, while I spend my mornings 30 feet up in the air helping kids with disabilities maneuver around a ropes course. In the afternoon we canoe or go to the pool and the evenings are spent fishing. And that brings me to today's funny camp story:

I finished up my responsibilities early yesterday evening and headed down to the fish pond to help out, hoping to do some fishing myself. Usually the pond is pretty chill and not too many fish get caught. The fish must have been hungry last night, however; altogether we caught ten fish! We do catch and release fishing, so I spent all of my time running around unhooking fish caught by campers. As the evening was coming to a close, I still hadn't gotten to do any fishing myself. (most of the other counselors are quite squeamish about touching fish, so I did all of the unhooking) Finally someone handed me a fishing pole and I got one cast out into the pond. I only waited 30seconds before I was reeling in a struggling rainbow trout!

When I got it up, I saw that there was no way that I would be able to get the hook out. It had swallowed it so deep that I couldn't even see it and unfortunately it was bleeding from its gills. We quickly cut it loose, hoping it could survive the ordeal. However, it was only a few minutes later that there it was, floating on the side of the pond. I scooped it out; all the while sitting on a poky plant and getting prickles in my derriere. When I got it untangled from the weeds, I had to be discrete about going to dispose of the fish, because some of the campers get upset when they see one dead.

I had a hard time deciding where to put it, not wanting to stink up the garbage cans and therefore the whole camp. I finally decided to dump it in the little creek that runs by camp. I figured fish die in there naturally all the time anyway so one more couldn't hurt. When I tossed it over, it immediately got stuck on the side and went nowhere. I couldn't just leave it there to rot, so I scrambled down the steep bank and scooped it back out with my net.

After scrambling back up the bank, I was standing outside the lodge when one of the counselors walked by and suggested that I wrap it up and stick it in the freezer for Chef Chris to cook for me. Brilliant! So I hosed of the pond scum and we wrapped it up and left a note for Chef Chris. Today when I went down to the dining hall for lunch, there was a note for me from Chef Chris. He had my fish all cooked and ready for me! I was a little nervous - I've never eaten a freshly caught fish or trout at all for that matter. It was delicious! I don't know what Chef Chris did to it, but I never would have guessed that that fish came out of that nasty pond!