Catch and Release
I pulled my truck off the road onto a gravel strip along US-25 just west of La Grange. There was a rust-red cattle gate there with two blaze orange “No Trespassing” signs on it.
Not that there was anything on the property really worth trespassing for. I guess you could jack my lawn chairs if you were so inclined. There’s a cooler with a busted latch next to the barn. It holds the cold in just fine, it just doesn't lock. Help yourself I guess.
I stuck an old brass key in the padlock keeping the chain secured around the fence post and the end of the gate that kept it shut. I swung the gate open and kicked a rock into place to ensure it didn’t close on me. I hefted myself into the drivers seat and shut the door, silencing the door chime and continued up the driveway.
I pulled up to the boarded up shack of a house that my great uncle used to live in some sixty years ago. The house had sat empty for maybe the last fifty, and stayed largely untouched. The land was technically owned by my father’s cousin now. He was hardley ever here though. He lived down south of Lexington. Bit of a strange man but he was always very kind to me.
I carried on past the “house” and by the pole barn which was in somewhat better shape. The tractor inside still ran. I’d come down and bush hog once a month as payment for the use of the property.
I drove past the barn where the gravel driveway ended and continued into the field behind, and kicked the truck into four-wheel drive just in case. A few short minutes of cutting through a few fields and I was finally on the back half of the property.
A pristine little pond met me as it always did. Surrounded on one half by trees and nothing but a lonely willow tree on the other. There was a small dock, but I didn’t trust it. Most of the boards had long started to rot so I never went out on it anymore. I might get around to replacing the planks next year.
I stopped my truck and locked the emergency brake into place. I stepped out and rolled my shoulders, admiring the sounds and smells that brought me back to my childhood. Wet dirt, grass and the soft hum of insects and frogs. There was a new subdivision maybe a mile away on the other side of the trees but not close enough to spoil the quiet.
I went to the back of my truck and dropped the gate pulling my pole and tackle box to the side and grabbing one end of my own cooler. I heaved the cooler off the edge of the bed as soon as a sudden splash made me jump a little. I lost my grip and one of the handles and fumbled the cooler to the ground, where my six pack of beer and my lunch spilled onto the ground along with a fair bit of the gas-station ice.
I grumbled to myself, trying my best not to let it ruin my day off. I spun around to look at the pond and sure enough saw ripples radiating away from the dock. The ripples were too big to be a bass or bluegill. My best guess was a turtle got to sunning itself on the boards and took a dive in the water when it saw me.
I righted the cooler and replaced my drinks and food, pulling one beer off the ring tabs, deciding it was a sign to start a little early. I left the spilled ice in the dirt. What was still left in the cooler should have been more than enough to keep it cold.
I grabbed my pole and shook off my funk, admiring the lake and the pretty blue sky. Scattered perfect puffy wite clouds dotted the endless expanse of blue. Dad would have referred to it as a “Homer Simpson” sky.
I went to the edge of the water and set my reel, giving the neon colored ribbon-tail bait a quick once over. I flicked the rod and sent the fake worm about halfway across the pond. It wasnt a big feat, the little pond was maybe a hundred yards at its longest and barely fifty across.
I began to slowly reel the worm, back, throwing in some light rod jerks every now and then for some flare, resisting the urge to get too fancy with my angling. The worm made its way back to me without incident. Not that I really expected a hit on my first cast, but everyone always kind of hopes for one. I reached down and popped the tab on my beer. Blowing some of the foam onto the grass before taking a long cold drink. I “aaahhh’ed” appropriately. And once again felt the stress off the week washing away. It was sunny, and breezy, it was calm and quiet. And I was doing the one activity that every man in the world loved.
I set my reel and gave it another flick, sending the neon worm into the sky where it plopped a good twenty yards out. I let it sink for a second before leaning over to set my beer down with my free hand.
I almost choked as the rod was nearly yanked out of my hands. I dropped my beer can in the grass and held onto the pole for dear life. Line was spooling out of the reel like mad. I finally got my hand on it and yanked hard. Hopefully setting the hook in whatever monster had taken the bait.
The rod itself was nearly bent in half, I began to sweat. The reel was only spun up with twenty-five pound test line. It was all I ever needed here. There wasn’t a single fish in this pond over fifteen.
I began the laborious few minutes of slowly tugging the rod back, followed by furious reeling, hoping to wear it out before it snapped my line. My mind racked with what mystery pond monster had enough ass to cause all this. Was it possible there was some largemouth bass super-fish down there that had never been caught?
An iridescent green tail fin kicked up a massive splash near the surface as it struggled against the line. My jaw dropped as I was stunned into momentary awe. The tail fin itself was nearly a foot long. There was no way. I had to be hallucinating. A fin that size would mean the fish had to be at LEAST four feet long if not more. The world record on a largemouth bass was only two and half.
I doubled down on my reeling. It dawned on me that if I HAD just hooked the worlds largest bass then I was either going to have to keep it to myself or I was going to be looking at a fairly hefty fine from Fish and Wildlife. This wasn’t technically my land and I hadn’t paid for a fishing permit.
But the devil on my shoulder said this fish might be worth doing just tiny a bit of jail time for. The line was near the edge of the water and I stepped into the shallows of the lake edge. The line wouldn't be able to drag this thing onto shore. I’d have to grab it and wrangle it in. I no longer cared about my boots or getting wet and muddy. I was about to be famous.
The line was right at my feet now, and I could see the sheen of scales through the muddy water. I dropped my rod and dove on the wriggling monster like a tiger and wrassled it into the air like a grizzly bear.
Only to have it scream bloody murder in my ear and slap me across the face with a ...flipper???
I screamed back in horror as I realized whatever I had just reeled in was not a fish at all. And fell back into the muddy water. The horrified screaming seapony flailed in wiggled on top of me in absolute abject terror and I, holding it together only marginally better, was screaming and flailing on my own, only in a much manlier fashion.
We both scrambled away from each other as best we could, me tearing through some weeds and clamoring up the muddy bank back onto the grass, now soaked, but no longer screaming.
“AAAAAHHHHAHAHA OOOOOOW,” the seapony screamed. Holding a hoof to her cheek and still flopping around in the shallows like… well… a fish.
I had finally scrambled my brains back together enough to realize that what I had hooked was not the largest bass in the world and in fact was what appeared to be a young Equestrian mermaid pony that had somehow ended up in my uncle’s lake. I had never even seen an Equestrian land pony outside of the news. Much less this.
“What the hell are you doing here?!” I finally managed to shout at the flailing half fish half horse.
“YOU’RE TRYING TO KIIIIILL MEEHEHEHEHEEE!!!” she wailed.
“What?! I’m not trying to kill you! Why are you even here! This is private property!”
“OOOOOWWWHAHAHAOOOOOW! IT HURTS!!” She gave no indication of having heard my questions.
I did however finally see the tail of my neon ribbon tail bait hanging out the corner of her mouth. With the silver barbed tip of the hook poking out the left side of her cheek. I grimace internally. That explained some of it at least.
“Did you try and eat my worm?!”
“IT LOOKED LIKE A GUMMY WORM!” she defended indignantly through her tears. “WHY WOULD YOU PUT HOOKS INTO THESE?!?!”
“WHY WOULD YOU EAT A GUMMY WORM YOU FOUND FLOATING IN A DIRTY POND!??” I challenged back, unhappy that I was being made out to be the bad guy in this scenario.
“GET IT OUUUUUUT!!!”
“OKAY! OKAY! Calm down, we’ll get it out just stop screaming!” I stepped back into the water. I was already soaked anyway. I knelt in the mud next to the sniffling waterhorse. I finally had the chance to get a good look at her. She had a beautiful set of iridescent emerald green scales on her lower half and her eyes, though currently filled with tears, were a dark crystalline purple. “Okay hold still, move your flipper and lemme see.”
She choked back a few more sobs. Before lowering her fin and revealing her cheek. Sure enough the metal barb had poked clean through her flesh. I felt a twang of guilt.
I reached my hand up toward her, as she recoiled. “Don’t touch it!”
“I can’t get it out without touching it,” I clarified. “Can you open your mouth?”
She nodded, before lowering her jaw and angling her head up toward me. There was my neon ribbon tail worm stuck to the inside of her cheek.
“We’re gonna have to pull it out, okay?”
“No! It’s gonna hurt!” she objected.
“It’s gotta come out, we can’t leave it in there. You gotta be tough for a bit okay? Then it’ll all be over.” I wondered briefly if I was being too patronizing.
She took a few preparatory breathes and sniffles before nodding bravely.
I pulled out my pocket knife cutting the line so the aqua-pone was no longer tethered to my fishing rod. “Alright come on, I’m gonna carry you to the truck. So we can snip the barb off the hook.”
She nodded again, still cupping her flipper to her cheek painfully. I reached down into the water scooping one arm under the fish half and one end under the pony half. I hoisted the ocean equine out of the pond and made my way onto dry land, careful not to slip on the muddy bank.
She hooked her free flipper around my neck for support, clearly not accustomed to being carried around by land mammals.
I set the mare on the bed of my truck as gently as I could. She seemed to take a brief moment away from her whimpering to scrutinize her new surroundings. I scrambled through my tackle box to find my leatherman.
Leathermen found, I also grabbed a clean rag out of the cab that I stole from the gym at work along with the little first aid kit I kept in my door pocket. I came back to the quivering fish horse.
“Okay, here’s the plan, I'm gonna snip off the barb, nice and gentle like. Then the rest of the hook will come free, no problem. Easy day. Okay?”
The aquatic pony eyeballed the leatherman dubiously.
“Unless you have a better plan,” I added.
The pony frowned. She did not, in fact, have a better plan. “Okay, just be gentle.”
I nodded unfolding the leatherman’s pliers. “Open wide,” she did. The hook wasn’t very far back. I still had to stick my fingers in a seapony’s mouth to grab hold of the end which I wasn’t super hyped about but it is what it is I guess. A pinched the eyelet of the hook inside her cheek between my fingers.
She whimpered and trembled slightly as her tail twitched. “I know, babe, but you gotta hold still. You’re doing great.” Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks, but she steadied herself. I set the barbed end as far back in the pliers as I could. “Ready?” I asked. She blinked in reply. “One, two, three.”
*Snip*
She flinched and whimpered one more time. The barbed end fell to the ground.
“Almost done, you’re doing great. I’m gonna pull it through now, okay?”
A few more tears leaked out and she slapped at my free hand with her flipper which I held as comfortingly as I could. I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with the appendages but she didn’t seem to mind, she squeezed my hand with a surprising amount of strength.
“Here we go. One. Two…” I slipped the remainder of the hook through her cheek and out of her mouth along with the worm. A final jolt of pain caused her to yelp and flinch.
“It’s done!” I released the breath I didn't know I was holding. “All done!” She clasped her mouth shut and caressed her cheek painfully.
“Here,” I offered spinning around for my cooler and scooping out a cold beer can. “Hold this against your cheek.”
“ ‘hank you,” she murmured through the corner of her mouth. As she took the can in one of her flippers and held it against her cheek.
I began digging through my first aid kit for a waterproof band-aid. I found a half tube of neosporin and dabbed some onto my finger. “Move the can for a sec.” she seemed to understand what my intent was and did so without comment. I placed the antiseptic ointment over the tiny needle sized hole in her cheek and unwrapped the band-aid. “I don’t know if this is gonna stick,” I admitted feeling somewhat stupid for my effort. It seemed to hold on just fine for now at least.
The seapony sniffled. “Thank you, for helping me and everything,” she finally said embarrassedly. “I’m sorry for eating your worm.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the absurdity of it all. “I’m sorry for hooking you like a fish,” I apologized back. “Are you gonna be okay?” she nodded. “Do you want me to take you to the hospital?” She shook her head, massaging her cheek tenderly.
“I’ll be fine.”
I reached down and grabbed myself a beer. “You wanna tell me why you’re even here now? I find it hard to believe you hopped across the portal just to hang out in little ponds in the middle of nowhere Kentucky.”
“I’m here on a work study for the EPA, as part of the U.S. - Equestrian student exchange program. I’m staying with a Family in that subdivision until my classes start next month. Then I’m going to be visiting various dams and waterways doing field research.”
“I’m very happy for you but I still don’t understand how you ended up in my pond.”
“The family I’m staying with has a pool. It was part of the requirements to host an aquatic homestay. And don’t get me wrong they’re very nice and they’ve been as accommodating as they can be… but the pool water tastes funny, and I miss real water. This was the closest one I could find on google maps. I didn’t think anyone actually lived here.”
“And you thought gummy worms were just falling from the sky and decided not to ask questions?”
“I’m not proud of it okay!” she snapped, her cheeks turning faintly red. “It was just instinct. It was bright and shiny and pretty and I wanted to eat it.”
I held up my hands defensively, unable to keep a small smile off my face. She grumbled and cracked the beer that she was holding against her cheek, deciding apparently it would be better used in her stomach. She began to chug the can down as quickly as she could. I didn’t stop her. If she was old enough to go to another dimension unescorted she was probably old enough to drink.
“So what’s your name?” I asked.
She lowered the can and suppressed a dainty burp. “Jetty.”
“I’m Joe,” I held my hand out to her. She offered her flipper in return and I did my best to shake it.
“Nice to meet you,” she sipped her beer a little more demurely as she took a deep breath and looked back out over the now calm pond. “I guess I spoiled your fishing day.”
I snorted. “Well, I won’t pretend this is what I was expecting out of my Sunday, but at least I got a cool fishing story out of it. No ones gonna believe I caught a seapony though. You’re probably some kind of state record.”
That got a laugh out of her at least.
“And you’re welcome to swim here whenever you like. Just maybe leave a floaty or something out there so I know you’re here before I start throwing out lines.”
“I could just text you.”
I gave her a slightly incredulous look, eyeballing her flippers dubiously. “Can you even use a cell phone?”
She puffed up proudly. “We had to learn to use human devices as part of our onboarding classes to come across the portal. I’ll have you know I am a fine texter.”
I chuckled. I pushed away from the bed and went back to the cab and got my phone off the center console. Grateful of my decision to leave it so it didn’t go into the lake with me. I opened up the contacts and set it up for her before handing the device over.
She held the phone in one flipper while the other carefully poked at numbers on by one. It was a slow process but pretty adorable. She stuck her tongue out in deep concentration and she did her best to plug in her number. “I normally have a stylus for this…” she complained. “There.” She flippered the phone back to me. And I sent the number a quick text with my name so she’d have it also.
The pony finished off her beer.
“How’s your cheek?” I asked.
She thought about it for a moment. Opening and closing her mouth experimentally. “I think another beer would make it feel better.”
She got another laugh out of me. I scooped one out of the cooler and popped the tab for her. She accepted it happily. I grabbed another of my own and fished out an apple that I had brought for lunch. “You hungry?”
She stared at the apple like a starving dog. “I don’t wanna eat your lunch too,” she answered with poorly restrained longing.
“I brought a sandwich. Here.” She accepted the apple gratefully.
“Thank you,” she drooled as she tore into the fruit.
“Least I can do after stabbing you through the face with a fish hook,” I noted, grabbing my bologna sandwich for myself.
We snacked in amiable silence for a few moments just enjoying the day and the cool breeze. I couldn’t help but notice she ate the whole apple, core and all. I didn’t comment on it. I finished off my sandwich and crushed up my last beer can tossing it back into the cooler.
“I’ve gotta get going. You want me to give you a ride back?”
“It wouldn't be a bother would it?”
“Nah, I drive by that subdivision on my way home anyway. Come on.” I held my arms out for the half pony. She wiggled closer and held her flippers out appreciatively. I scooped up the tiny amphibious horse and deposited her in the passenger's seat. She actually managed the seatbelt by herself.
I hopped in the driver's seat as we left the pond behind.
She had to squirm around a little before finding a comfortable way to sit on the truck's bench seat. She turned to me in what I could only guess was slight apprehension. “So… will you be here next weekend?” She tapped her flipper-tips together awkwardly.
I couldn’t help but smile. It was just too cute.
I never really stood a chance.
