I saw several fish swimming in the creek¹ this morning, as many as eight to twelve. A grey ghostly shadowed slow shimmering of fins and scales in a protected pocket of murky water beneath the rough old rock wall, across on the neighbor’s side.² I didn’t think I could capture them sufficiently in a photograph or video, especially at that distance.

They looked a little sickly or diseased to me, but perhaps I am projecting that onto them because the creek smells foul these days, and I understand it to be somewhat polluted, both from readings (see link in¹ below) and past personal observations³. In actuality I guess these fish are flourishing? I’ll check on them again soon.

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1. My backyard abuts a suburban/urban creek, Big Cottonwood Creek ↩︎

2. I’m aware this sentence is extra but I can do whatever I want here; I can cherish and protect all my darlings. ↩︎

3. One firsthand example: based on strong auditory evidence followed by visual confirmation of black plastic casing debris floating downstream, I have reason to believe that on a certain afternoon a couple of years ago my neighbors a few houses upstream disposed of at least one television set (a 1990s-era CRT/“box”-style model) by heaving or toppling it into the creek. ↩︎