As promised here's some more pics of Sunny at 3B's Inn along with the story of how we almost lost her and her rescue. She's become another pet for us. She's our 10+yr old carp that's around 2 1/2ft long with big 'ol eyes the size of marbles. Oh and by the way she's the smallest of 4 carp in our pond. The other 3 are bronze colored and even more impressive but hard to get pictures of. The pictures and video in this story are from calmer times months past the traumatic events depicted. There was just too much going on at the time to think about documenting for social media. The story, or "fish tale" will have to suffice.😁
So...our pond is spring fed with 3 incoming flows and a man made dam with an 18" tube type out flow that moves the water a distance of about 50ft across and under the dam. The water dumps out with a 4ft waterfall like drop onto large rocks and into the lower creek. It's constantly cycling at a comfortable rate making for a fresh, clean pond enjoyed by people, dogs and fish alike. Well...usually anyway.
May 2018 during the record breaking rains we got somewhere on the order of 18 inches of rain in just about that many days! To say that the pond was flooded and the out flow a RAGING whitewater might be an understatement. The last I saw Sunny during the deluge she looked to be feeding near the outlet. In hindsight I guess she was struggling a bit but I didn't think much of it at the time. Well the rains stopped and as the days passed and the pond cleared we became concerned when our normally predictable girl was a no show. I think it was day 4 when I was mowing the grass in the meadow by the creek that I thought I saw orange through the brush. A closer look and I was sure it was her. Exposed, not moving, with patches of scales missing and visible flesh wounds. No doubt we'd lost her! Ann and I were pretty upset as we tried to get through the thick brambles to the creek. We figured the best we could do would be retrieve and bury her so the bears and coyotes didn't get her remains. I get to her and as I reach down she moves. She's ALIVE! Now I realize a couple things. She went down that pipe, dropped onto the rocks, flipped and thrashed her way into a creek puddle no longer or deeper than her body, turned herself around to get the water running across her gils and survived there without moving for more than 4 days! The next thing I realize is the 5 gallon Lowes bucket I brought for the "body" isn't going to work. To quote a line from Jaws "We're gonna need a bigger boat" She's a big fish! We ended up hauling her up and out in a wet bed sheet. She was cut up and bruised pretty bad but when we got her back into the pond she actually seemed grateful.(I know I know...she's a fish but a pet's a pet and we've decided to assign emotions to her. Come on, you're dog people, you get it.😉) Anyway, she stayed close to us along the shore for awhile and did a series of full body breaches kind of like a happy little whale!
It's been a year. She's completely healed and we've since added a water level gate system at the outlet so we hopefully never have to go through that again.
Of course we think you should come meet her. Maybe even take a swim with her. After all, dogs aren't the only friendly critters that live in dog friendly Asheville and at 3B's Inn!