Gone Fishin'

Took H fishing today because he's been dead set on it and I finally had an opportunity. Most of the time we go fishing, we have no luck. Today, we caught three things. A yellow perch, a bluegill, and a turtle.

Henry catches a gigantic fish, I swear.

The perch was first, then the bluegill. Both in pretty quick succession. The turtle was a bit later. Was an accident, of course. Luckily it barely got hooked, it mostly just had the line wrap around it's foot. I was able to free it with no visible damage, though the little yank I had to do probably wasn't pleasant for ol' Shelly (I just named it now.) H wanted to put the turtle in the bucket we had the fish in, so I did.

Shelly

Bucket o' lake life

After a few seconds, H wanted me to get the turtle out because turtles breathe air and he didn't want it to get hurt. I reached in to grab it but got a bit poked and couldn't catch it, so I dumped out some of the water to make it easier. Was able to get the turtle out and let him free. So long, Shelly. That left the bluegill and the perch. I tried to add a little extra water into the bucket, but in the process, the bluegill jumped out, leaving only the perch behind.

As is usually the case when we go fishing, H had wanted to take it home and cook it. And because I'm way too overly sensitive about things including a dumb ol' fish even though I eat meat because I'm a complete and total hypocrite, I agreed to do it and didn't let my own feelings on having to kill a fish myself show. I told him we would take the bucket home so his brother could see the fish first. We went and picked up the brother (still need to find a nickname for him for this blog, or I could just use their real names, but whatever) from camp and we went home. We had to leave the fish behind so the younger one could go to his therapy so we did that, ol' Perchy sitting in his bucket, waiting for his demise, none-the-wiser. (side note: Perchy is not nearly as cute of a nickname as Shelly. That fish can't catch no breaks.)

On the way home from all that, H decided that he didn't want to eat the fish, because he felt bad for it. He wanted to let it go. I offered to let it go in the pond behind the house, but he said no, he wanted to return it to the lake, so it could be with its family. Can't really say no to that, can I?

So we took Perchy back to his home in the lake. I am proud of H, more than I can really express. His empathy, his willingness to stand up for what he believed, his ability to tell me what he thought, but mostly, his being him.

Letting Perchy go