“Karen dumped several thousand fish into my pond.”
Silence.
“Say that again.”
I did.
Daniel stopped whatever he had been doing.
“You’re serious.”
“She gave me a $4,800 invoice.”
Another pause.
“Please tell me you didn’t pay it.”
“I’m old.”
“Not senile.”
“Good.”
“What kind of fish?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Transfer permit?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
“Health certificate?”
“No.”
“Wildlife authorization?”
“No.”
“Stocking permit?”
“Nothing.”
“Contractor?”
“Mountain Aquatic Services.”
Daniel exhaled.
“Photograph everything.”
“Already did.”
“Especially tags.”
“I’ve got several.”
“Send them.”
I sent twelve photographs.
Daniel called back nine minutes later.
His voice had changed.
“Robert.”
“Yeah.”
“Do not let Silver Ridge remove those fish.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“I mean nobody.”
“Not Karen.”
“Not the contractor.”
“Not some guy who says he’s from the state unless you verify him.”
“Why?”
“The tag format looks registered.”
“Registered with who?”
“I found several matching prefixes in state aquaculture records.”
“Those fish may be part of a tracked breeding program.”
I looked across the pond again.
The water still churned.
“How valuable?”
“I have no idea.”
“Yet.”
“More importantly, you may have a biosecurity issue.”
That was the first moment I stopped thinking primarily about Karen.
Thousands of introduced fish could destroy a pond.
Disease.
Parasites.
Oxygen depletion.
Competition.
Crossbreeding.
My bass and trout population had been stable for years.
Now the pond contained several times more biomass than it had twenty-four hours earlier.
I called the county extension office.
They connected me with Dr. Maya Kent, a fisheries biologist who worked with private pond owners and commercial aquaculture facilities.
She reached the property before lunch.
Maya was forty-something, practical, sunburned, and visibly unimpressed by homeowner politics.
She carried meters, sample bottles, a cast net, and the expression of someone who had seen people do astonishingly stupid things with ponds.
The first thing she did was test dissolved oxygen.
Her face tightened.
“Too low.”
“How bad?”
“Not catastrophic yet.”
“But if this density is what it appears to be, we could have a major die-off tonight.”
She looked at me.
“Do you have aeration?”
“One surface fountain.”
“Not enough.”
Within two hours, I had rented two emergency aerators from a farm supply operation thirty miles away.
Maya positioned them in the deeper basin.
By afternoon, water was rolling violently near both units.
The fish spread.
Breathing improved.
That alone cost me almost six hundred dollars.
Karen had dropped living inventory into my pond without permission and created a situation where I had to spend money immediately just to keep animals from suffocating.
I documented every receipt.
Daniel’s idea.
“Paper beats outrage.”
He said.
Maya netted six tagged fish.
Three largemouth bass.
Two rainbow trout.
One unusually heavy bluegill.
She recorded tag numbers and released them immediately.
Then she stared at one bass for several seconds before letting it go.
“What?”