A City of Concern...

When I got home from work last night, I found a note on my door that a detective from the "Major Crimes Division" had been by my house to investigate the fish killing that occurred in my pond the previous morning. I also found that I had a voice mail from a different detective concerning the goldfish, and later emails from the Police Captain and a City Council member. It seems the entire police force has taken this case on!

Shortly after dinner, two investigators arrived at my house (maybe the ones that left the note earlier?). They asked me a few questions and looked at the pond. It turns out that I had met both of these officers a couple of weeks ago at Dairy Queen. They had asked me about my car wrap and about the Flying Biscuit while I was waiting for my to-go banana split! We were like old friends! Next the officers started canvasing the neighborhood. They knocked on doors, they stopped people that drove by, they questioned the kids that bicycled past my house. They went at it for at least two hours- but no information was available. After each neighbor was questioned, they would make a B-line to my house to ask me what happened. Each of them would stand there gazing down at my pond, at the one barely surviving goldfish, and just shake their heads and question how any person could do something like this. My front yard began to look like a memorial service. Flocks of neighbors stood around shaking their heads while the police were continuing their investigation further down the street.We got so caught up in the moment, that I think most of us forgot that we were mourning some goldfish.

Actually, I think we were mourning the state of humanity more. The fact that a person could deliberately kill living animals is a sad reflection on society. It wasn't the death of the fish, it was the death of trust. It was the loss of a feeling of security-- if someone could do this to my fish, what's to stop them from doing this to the dogs next door, or the cats down the street, or the widow down the block? I think that's what we mourned the most. I think that's what brought the neighbors to my yard-- we needed to feel the security of being around our friends and neighbors. To somehow make sense of the unsensable.

Today, there were no notes on the door, no emails, no phone calls. No neighbors stopped by to shake their heads. Life goes on, I guess. Except for the remaining goldfish that's been fighting to breath in my pond for the past 48 hours. At some point today, he lost the fight and moved on as well.