I Love Little Fishies, Don't You?

When I was 10, my friend Adrienne and I were watching TV in her parents' bedroom when a bolt of lightning shot through the window and blew up the set in front of our  eyes. Besides ruining the carpeting, it cemented my fear of thunderstorms.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed one of biblical proportions--a true killer. Without warning the sky turned from bright sun to black, changing two in the afternoon into ten at night. Water cascaded down in torrents from the rooftops, fierce winds whipped up trees, and pelting hailstones followed with a vengeance. Lightning bolts appeared perilously close to the exact spot on which I cowered, peering out a store window watching the devastation unfold on Main Street. When the rain let up enough to make a run for the car, we saw that the streets of tiny Rhinebeck village were flooded, causing havoc for many drivers. Happily, our SUV got through.

Once back home, we saw what God had wrought: A huge downed tree rested on the lawn, grazing the house. Naturally, there was no power. After a sticky, fan-less night complete with a candlelit dinner but no running water, this morning the true loss was recorded: All the fish in our koi pond were floating belly up. The very same fish--Manny, Mo and Jack-- that had weathered four harsh winters, surviving under the frozen ice and then bobbing to the surface each spring looking fat and happy, their bubbly personalities intact. According to the repair crew who worked nearby, the lightning that hit our tree had certainly traveled underground and electrocuted the poor little guys. They never knew what hit them.