Key Up the Adventure Music

You may remember a long time ago, when it rained so much I found a baby catfish stuck with it's head in a sewer grate in my subdivision because the lake at Dana Colbert Park overflowed, and then poured over the two ditches and drained down the access sidewalk to the park into the grate west of my house.

Well, with our torrents of rain this week, it happened again. Yesterday evening as we were returning MacTroll's rental car (his flight from NYC was grounded because of the floods in Chicago, so he didn't get to Illinois until midnight and then spent the night in Lisle before driving home on Thursday afternoon), when I spotted another one. This time, MacTroll jumped out and went over and helped the dude get free of the grate pushing him through. As he was doing so, another smaller fish jumped out of the grate.

This morning, when we took X-man to school there were two smaller catfish with heads too big to go down the grate. I couldn't leave them there to die, so I got a bucket and put them in the bucket (using a towel to pick them up because -- ewww)!

I hate catfish they creep me out. Catfish and Asian Carp. Bleh! I put them in the bucket and put cardboard on top, so they wouldn't flip around, and then, Mactroll laughing until he cried at me freaking out, drove me to the lake on the far side (where there are loads of baby geese and ducks) and watched me toss them back into the lake.

I've now washed my hands about a dozen times.

I imagine, if there are others, swimming around in the extra drainage areas that when the water finally stops falling from the sky, there will be a fish feast of a great magnitude for the coyotes and hawks.

Funny how I'm okay with them getting eaten by other wildlife, but I'm totally not okay with getting killed in a storm drain grate.

Oh, and I really hope when they post "Don't litter" on the grates because that water returns to streams and creeks with actual wildlife, that it's true. Because maybe those fish that were lost down the grate will survive on there.

All I know is that if I were a prospective house builder, I would NEVER buy those two lots that have the water overflow problem.