Attack of the Giant Carp

Walden Pond...a lovely place for early morning swimming in the summer. A few weeks back, my friend Marissa and I had exactly this in mind. Little did we know...

Still yawning from our too early rise-and-shine to avoid the summer crowds, we wade into the still kinda chilly pond water. We swim slowly, chatting about kids' names and marriage and pregnancy cravings.

Marissa's never swum across and back, but we're halfway across and decide to go for it. We've stayed close to the side shore, in case one of us gets tired. We pass a family, sitting and fishing, and say hello.

Just beyond the family, the far shore is in sight. I'm excited, accompanying Marissa on her longest swim and making my season's first trip across and back. When suddenly...

"What the hell is that?" I shout, seeing a moving orange figure twenty yards ahead. Marissa stops. We tread water. It's a fish, we decide. "It's gigantic," Marissa hollers. We're laughing, and whooping. We're also nervous and feeling mighty silly, so scared of a fish. I mention that it looks like something out of a Japanese fairy tale. He stays directly in our path for several minutes, then starts to swim toward the middle of the pond. We go forward.

Then stop. Abruptly. Our forward motion has brought the fish back. Now we begin debating in earnest...do we go forward, or do we go back? It's just a fish, we say. True. But the fish doesn't seem to want us to go near it. The shore is in sight. But, that fish is gi-normous.

Marissa screams. "It's coming toward us, it's coming at us!" I scream, too. We're both doing a lot of screaming and flailing and laughing and more screaming. I begin furiously swimming the crawl back toward our home shore. After creating comfortable distance, I stop and turn, seeing that Marissa is still back there, screaming and shouting, the carp circling her.

"Swim," I yell.

"I'm trying, I can only dog paddle," she hollers back.

We're still laughing and whooping and generally nutty. She catches up to me, narrowly escaping the carp's pursuit. We can't stop laughing and talking about the fish attack. Marissa notes that up close, the fish was the size of her leg. It seemed that way from a distance as well. She says at least it wasn't a snapping turtle. She's really afraid of those.

We pass the fishing family on our way back. We tell them our tale. Marissa notes that "we screamed like little girls." And I have to admit that she is right. We ask if they've ever known fish to attack. The dad tells us it sounds like a carp. And the mom says that we don't need to worry about the carp, but notes that there are snapping turtles in the pond, and suggests that we watch out if we see one of those.