There are not many people in the world who have tame fish. Yes, yes, tame or, more precisely, domesticated, well, just like there are wild and domestic animals. Pets are, for example, a cat or a dog. And here is the fish, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? Why? Well, firstly, fish are more difficult to tame, even such a docile and intelligent trout as Dikoni. There are simply miracles told about her! And secondly, not everyone has the patience to teach fish according to all the rules.
However, if you listen to the man who first told about Dickony - some say he was an Indian, others say he was not, a white man from the Midwest, but in fact he might as well have been a Southerner or a New England Yankee - he said that if you can catch a young trout and train it properly, you will raise a beautiful tame pet fish.
Everyone called that man Old Bob; True, in his youth everyone called him Young Bob, but oh well. That morning—it was the eleventh of July near Xenia, Ohio—he went out in his rowboat to fish. Slap, slap, slap of the oars through the water, and suddenly, to the east of the lake channel, he saw a trout about six inches long. He cast his fishing rod, caught a trout and examined it carefully. She was very pretty and looked extremely smart. “I’ve never seen one like this,” Bob thought. She had a high forehead, a soft rounded chin and a very intelligent look.
This is exactly the kind of trout that Old Bob dreamed of.
- Come to me! - he called tenderly.
But out of excitement I swallowed the letters “i” and “m”, and it turned out not “come to me”, but “dikoni”. Trout realized that they were addressing her, and decided that that was her name - Dikoni.
The hook caught the trout at the tip of its lower lip, and Old Bob carefully unhooked it. A little water collected at the bottom of the boat, this often happens no matter how much you dig the boat. Bob put the trout in there. “Let him swim until we get to the shore,” he decided. On the shore, Bob found a wooden trough, hollowed out from the trunk of a hollow tree. I filled the trough with water, and drilled a small hole in the wall near the bottom. Then I planed the plug and plugged the hole so that the water would not escape.
When everything was ready, he took the trough to the boat, poured water into it and put the trout in it. How happy Dikoni was to receive her own swimming pool!
Old Bob picked up the trough with Dickony, returned to his hut and set up the fish in a dark corner under the awning. He fed the fish generously: he poured cornmeal and added earthworms mixed with fried brisket. Let him eat and rest!
At night in the darkness, Old Bob, wearing only his socks, tiptoed to the trough and cautiously looked into it. Thank God, Dikoni slept sweetly. This is what Bob was counting on. He carefully took the plug out of the trough and let out a little water. Just a little! And then he put the plug back in place and returned to his room.
And so, night after night, Old Bob repeated the same thing: he let a little water out of the trough, drop by drop. And the water in the trough became less and less, but so gradually that Dikoni did not notice it.
Moreover, she didn’t even notice how there was no more water in the trough. And for three whole weeks she continued to live in a completely dry trough, never feeling that anything had changed.
It was only then that Old Bob decided that it was time to start training his girlfriend. He carried Dikoni out of the yard and let her hobble along the path. Dikoni indeed turned out to be very smart and quickly learned to use fins instead of legs when walking. It was clear that she was no worse off on land than in water, however, she, in general, had no choice.
Within a few days, the trout was accepting food from Bob directly from his hands. But most of all, Dickonie loved to climb onto Bob’s lap, sit there and look at the world with greed and curiosity.
Soon Dickony followed Old Bob wherever he went. She especially liked going around his entire household with him, it was so touching. Sometimes, however, it got stuck in the thick grass, its fins got tangled in it, and Bob had to go back and clear the way for his pet fish.
In a word, Old Bob and Dickony became inseparable friends; they were not separated even when the old farmer went into the forest. At night, Dikoni slept at her owner’s feet. And when the nights were cool, he covered her nose with the edge of the blanket.
Old Bob didn’t tell anyone about his amazing pet, and not for some reason, he just didn’t hope that they would believe him. But he decided that it was time to show Dikoni to some of the neighbors, then let them believe it or not. He made this decision finally and irrevocably one evening when, before sunset, he went to the spring that flowed behind his hut, where he stored oil in a tub. The ice water of such a spring was better than the current refrigerator for storing butter, eggs, milk and similar products. Old Bob even built special bridges from which it was more convenient to lower a closed tub into the water or lift it from there.
The evening was calm and beautiful, not a breeze. When they crossed the clearing where Bob had just recently been whittling a piece of wood for winter kindling, he heard it rustling under the fins of Dickonie, who was obediently trotting behind him. Soon they reached the bank of the stream, where it was easier to move on the wet soil of Dikoni.
So they reached the bridge. Dikoni felt like a fish out of water here. She had followed old Bob to the stream more than once; this was her favorite walk, but she had never boldly stepped out onto the bridge. The bridge rose about two feet above the water, and Old Bob was afraid that Dickony might get dizzy. And then she climbed onto the bridge for the first time, and Old Bob was very proud that his pet fish dared to take such a step.
“Well done, Dikoni,” he said. “I praise you for your courage!” Now you can sit here and wait while I get the tub of oil.
He was going to bake pancakes for himself and Dikoni that day, and Dikoni really liked a lot of butter with her pancakes.
And so Bob bent over the water and began to pull the tub by the rope, when suddenly he heard a slight splash. He thought that the pebble had rolled off the bank into the stream. He looked and his heart sank. In the place where Dikoni had just sat, there was a hole between two boards. Either Diconi took the wrong step, or simply did not notice the gap, one way or another, but she ended up in the water.
Old Bob rushed to the crack, spread out on his stomach and, peering into the depths, began to call his fish. He still hoped to save her.
- Hold your breath! - he shouted.
He began to tear off his shoes in order to jump after Dikoni into the water. But there was a splash again, glug-glug-glug—the water gurgled, and then Old Bob saw his Dickony. The fish floated up with its belly up. She drowned.
Old Bob was inconsolable. He took Dikoni to his hut, dug her grave and even put up a memorial plaque where he wrote her name and dates of life. In the spring, he decided to plant forget-me-nots here.
Now he spent long evenings alone, sitting in a chair by the kitchen stove and cursing himself that he taught the fish to swim and everything turned out so sadly. But then thick snow fell, powdering the hut and all the paths, and Old Bob thought that Dickonie would never be able to learn to climb over the snowdrifts, she would not be able to follow him everywhere as before, and her heart would break from grief. So maybe it was for the best, Old Bob consoled himself, that it all happened this way.
Only one thing haunted him: how did he make a mistake and not invite his neighbors in time to admire his hand trout? The only thing left was to tell everyone about her, which he did. The neighbors didn’t believe it, thinking that Old Bob was telling them stories. But when he took them to the stream and showed them the gap between the boards in the walkway, they were convinced that he was telling the truth.
In any case, this gap is still intact. Old Bob did not allow anyone to repair the walkway or move the boards. So she remained there in memory of Old Bob and his pet fish.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru