Barbra Streisand bought our fish!

All our koi (fish) were packed up and taken away a week ago. It was an awful emotional day, and I've felt sad about it ever since. But the cost of the pond maintenance is just nothing we can handle, and we're away so much that it adds to the troubles for a house sitter.

But we've been through so much sturm and drang over the years with fish, and replacement fish, and frogs, and turtles. Once I took a turtle to the vet and they told me it was already dead. euhh. Once I went to a turtle fanciers meeting at the mall with Big Mama in a box. She was a survivor turtle we'd adopted, but she had started eating our koi. She'd been seized in a raid of illegal turtles headed for a restaurant. We found a new home for Big Mama at that mall. I bet she's still alive.

We put the pond in right after the earthquake in 1994. At that time we each picked out a koi that was "our fish." We thought Dinah's was particularly ugly, because it was beige white, and always referred to it as the naked fish. Now it will live with Barbra Streisand. The only fish in the original group that had survived, the naked fish grew to monster size and developed lovely silver blue scales. It sold for $750. Our pond maintenance pal has lots of celebrity clients. Celebrity fish.

But koi are as unlikely a way to make money as investment horses. Along the way you will spend more than you will ever get back for them. Now investment chickens, that's a different story!