Fishy

Sometimes when I feed the goldfish in my backyard pond I linger for a few minutes, watching them swirl and skitter as they come up for their food. A few days ago I was doing this when out of the corner of my eye I saw a tiny flash next to a lily pad, which momentarily looked like a Mini-Me goldfish: just like the others but one eighth their size. I dismissed it as a trick of the light.


Then when I fed them yesterday morning, I noticed a small fish with an all black body, except for some orange markings around its gills. The thing is I've never bought a fish like that - I have two pure gold fish, a pure black one, a white and gold speckled one, a tortoiseshell one and the large pale one that we call The White Supremacist (because he's larger than all the others and bullies them mercilessly).


That evening I took The Flatmate outside to show him. He claimed that goldfish can change colour as they grow older, but as we watched it became evident that all of the original fish were present and unchanged. Then there was the black one with the orange gills. Then suddenly there was another black one with a silver belly. Then Mini-Me flitted up, snatched a fragment of food flake, then darted back into the depths. We have at least three additional fish in the pond, and I can only conclude that either someone has been stealing onto my property and restocking my pond, or this is the result of a Mummy Fish and a Daddy Fish loving each other very much.


Goldfish are notorious cannibals, so I'm surprised that there are so many bite-sized babies surviving in the pond. However it's interesting to note that all of the newbie fish are mostly black, rather than gold or white. Perhaps there's a good dose of natural selection going on in this pond, as the dark baby fish vanish into the shadows while the brightly toned baby fish get devoured by The White Supremacist.


Or maybe The White Supremacist just doesn't like the taste of emo fish. Who can tell?