Dear Editor:
(Story takes place on Muddy Creek Mountain.)
The mystery of Orange Peel begins with the flooding rain on Friday, June 19, 2020. I was in the basement sucking and dumping the 2 1/2 inches of water from the torrential rain that had come in. I went upstairs to get more towels and happened to look out my kitchen window to see two feet of water in pond area in front of the house (the pond area is enclosed). I made a comment to my husband that I would have to check for any flopping fish in the grass after the water receded.
Later in the evening I did and I did not find any. I took a count of the fish and found there were two fish missing. Now I had only nine left.
How did they escape? I can only surmise that at one point during the flooding rain that the water was higher than the wall and the fish floated out and rode a wave of water down the road into an overflowing ditch and into the creek.
Around 10:30 on Saturday night my husband told me that I should read a post on Facebook.
My neighbor, Ray, found an orange fish in a receding creek water puddle laying on its side, gasping for breath. He picked the fish up in his hands and carried it to his house. He and his wife, Rita, put the fish in a bucket of water and took it across the road to Josie Baldwin who owns the Bark & Board and does animal rescue. She put Orange Peel in a large oval horse watering trough.
I went down to Josie’s this morning with a bucket of pond water to retrieve Orange Peel. He/she is now back in the pond with the others. I still don’t know what happened to the second one.
Judy Stack
Alderson
