He'd gone fishing for scouts that night. Apparently it wasn't catch and release. Mark actually caught five or six fish, so we should be happy that he only brought one home. Most of the boys killed and gutted their fish at the pond, but Mark had said that he wanted to take his home live and...keep it as a pet? put it in our pond? Hmmm, not sure about that one, but he wanted to bring it home. (I think that maybe the idea of bashing its head on a rock might not have been super appealing to him either, what do you think?) Naturally it didn't make it home alive, which meant that Kip got to gut it. I don't know that Kip would have done this except that Mark was just so so excited and proud about this fish. It was just so cute and sweet and beautiful to see (Mark's excitement, not the fish). He'd obviously had such a good time and I think he felt like he'd accomplished something by catching all those fish. You can't just throw feelings like that in the trash, so Kip--who has never gutted a fish before--turned to YouTube (hurray for youtube) for some instruction. And then Kip gutted the fish and took off its head. That's what love is. Sometimes it's bloody. And fish-gutsy. Usually it doesn't chop heads off, but in this case it did. It was very exciting.
The next day I cooked that fish up and we ate it. It was actually pretty delicious, but the bones everywhere were a little disconcerting. If we're going to make a habit of this, I'm going to need to figure out a more clever way to remove them that hand-picking them all out.
[P.S. Let me give a little shout out to those young men/scout leaders and their wives. I know a gaggle of boys can be hard and that your wives give you up for a night or more. But nights like Wednesday make me so grateful for what you do. Mark was just so excited and so proud of his accomplishment. So, thank you.]
No comments:
Post a Comment