Fat Finny Carp

He looked very hard at me …, and it seemed to me that
I had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye.

              —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Afternoon. Fat finny carp traced lazy circles in the
deep dark creekhole, flashing her cream-colored tummy
from time to time into the warm airy shade above. I
watched, full of curiosity, from the high creekbank.

Tall trees canopied overhead. Soft breezes playfully
teased nervous wild grasses, weed crowns, and tips of
dark-green feral shrubs roundabout.

“Carp, I see you,” I ventured in a friendly manner.

“Blow?!” said somewhat dismissive carp.

“Why are you twisting and turning, tracing lazy
circles in the deep water?” I asked bluntly, as if I
had a right to know.

“Blub-blub blul blurry blush blikes blee,” announced
carp, implying, by her sarcastic tone, that this was
frankly none of my business.

“OK,” I said. “Say it again. And a great deal more
leisurely. I can’t understand you from here.”

“Blow blay! Blow blay! Blub-blub blul blurry blush
blikes blee!” said carp, using an ugly tone even
grumpier than before. And she spoke at a blistering
pace, not slowing down one whit.

“Thank you,” I said, although I didn’t know for what.
To myself I thought, are those actual words I heard
from carp? The sounds reminded me of American English
in some respects; however, the blubby distortions were
a bit distracting.

While I puzzled over them—and fat finny carp traced
lazy circles in the deep dark creekhole—a previously
unnoticed background-blending bush, one that leaned
out from the far side’s precipitous bank, suddenly
shuddered, thereby releasing cascades of tumbling-down
dark-purple and blue-black mulberries!

Thousands and thousands of them plunked and plopped
and splashed all around and over the curve of carp’s
well-finned back like a shower of dirty hailstones,
making the creek’s surface waters in her immediate
vicinity roil and bubble and fizz, making the airspace
directly above burst and pop and shimmer, making it
crackle and flare and shine.

“Oooooh! Mulberry bush!” I yelped, startled
practically out of my wits. “You gave me quite a
start. I didn’t realize you leaned over the water from
the far creekbank.”

Both ignored me. While mulberry bush stood rudely
silent, carp feasted on the fine ripe fruit. Lazily.
After all, berries practically slipped through her
gills. She swam in them. Literally.

From her behavior I could apprehend that she was not
surprised in the slightest by such extraordinary good
fortune. She must have known in advance that
mulberries were passively on their way and would soon
drop in like a waterfall pouring from the lip of a
mountain cliff into a foaming pool at its base. And
that’s, of course, why fat finny carp had traced her
lazy circles in the deep dark waterhole! She had
waited by pacing in her watery domain, had probably
counted down—in reverse, that is—anticipating the
berry bounty’s arrival all along.

I eyeballed the length and breadth of mulberry bush,
from top to bottom and left to right—and all through
its middle. Nothing appeared that I could discern to
explain the forceful bush tremble I had witnessed.
That is, to my satisfaction.

In the midst of turning to leave, however, I detected
a slight movement from out of the corner of my right
eye. Upstream, at the top of the far-side bank,
balanced on a horizontal branch of an immature,
nondescript tree, was none other than black squirrel,
who, with eye intense (and aglint with a belligerence
that implied a mindful mischievousness at work
somewhere in his agile brain), was staring right at
me.

“Black squirrel,” I asked a tad blamefully, “was it
you who just now shook mulberry bush, thereby causing
the multitude of sweet mulberries to tumble heads over
heels waterward—thus providing fat finny carp with a
stunning banquet?”

Pleased with himself to a fault, black squirrel
flipped his marvelous fluffy tail, and danced and
laughed with too much glee, refusing to add anything
beyond his suspicious body language and patronizing
I’ve-got-a-secret-and-I’m-not-telling snigger.

I returned home in a disappointed mood. What else can
I say?

As to carp’s fractured English, after much private
study, and following an extended pondering, I
concluded the effort by translating “Blow blay! Blow
blay! Blub-blub blul blurry blush blikes blee!” as
“OK! OK! Because mulberry bush likes me!”—and was
satisfied with my solution. It seemed the best I could
do under the circumstances.

Some mysteries shall remain mysteries.