The "The Age Of Those That Cannot Speak: Part 1" Story

It was an ordinary day.  A bit cold, but then again, I live in Pennsylvania and it is February.  We still have a slight bit of snow on the ground from the snow we had about a week ago.  My wife called me to the bedroom window and pointed to the large orange shape that was under the ice along the side of our pond that sits on the bank behind our home.  "I think our gold fish might not have made it through the winter," she said to me.  About half a dozen years ago we purchased close to a dozen small gold fish and a few medium sized gold fish to place in our newly finished pond on the bank behind our house.  This batch of fish was to replace the previous batch of fish that had mysteriously disappeared until one day we found a photograph in our mailbox showing a blue heron sitting on the peak of our roof looking down into our pond while we were on a short vacation to the Jersey shore.  The Heron had helped itself to our batch of a dozen goldfish and someone passing by had noticed the commotion and taken a photograph of it so we could see what might have happened to the gold fish.  We eventually got back to replacing the fish and had no trouble the second time.  We did lose a few fish during each of the first few winters due to the pond freezing on the top.  The couple of large fish did last the longest, but this one last fish made it through close to half a dozen winters.  He, or she, was a big eater who enjoyed being fed often and who just loved floating around the top of the pond in the spring, summer and fall of each year and hiding near the bottom, under protection we had supplied for it in the winter.  Well, we guessed that it had just outlived it's lifespan and had finally floated to the top and gotten stuck in the ice on the top of the pond.  I grabbed a shovel and broke through the surface to find the bright orange goldfish slightly enlarged in size, but still a beautiful orange color.  He or she must have reached the end of its lifetime.

Retrieving the dead fish from under the ice.

I dug through the icy top, retrieved the fish and buried the goldfish nearby while thanking it for all the good times it had given us.  Hopefully it lived a good life and enjoyed living in our back yard.  

Measured it to find it was close to a foot long.  A well-fed fish.

Perhaps we may try another school of fish in the near future and one may last as long as our latest one did.  

Buried in a nearby hole.

That all depends on how many blue heron that might notice the movement in the pond on our rear bank.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.