The one that got away.

I was living in northern Israel on a kibbutz (a communal farming community).  We had a lot of different ventures on the kibbutz including orchards (apples, lemons, grapefruit, almonds and quinces), cotton fields, dairy farm (with a herd of over 500 milking cows, and 1 very luck bull), chicken coops with thousands of chickens, a toilet paper factory and 15 very large fish ponds, stocked with carp, silver carp and some others that I can't remember, offhand.

On this particular day, we were  emptying one of the ponds (over an acre of surface area... maybe more), and the water had been draining into the Jordan river for about 2 days... today, the water was low, and we were capturing the thousands of silver carp in this pond and sending them off to Tel Aviv for processing.  A full day's work.

We would wade into the water with a mucky mud bottom, trying hard not to get stuck.  the water was still chest high... as we waded into the school of panicked silver carp (average size of 18 inches long) with nets to corral them into a smaller area, near the elevator (and angled belt-drive) to raise them into the tanker trucks for transport).

As we were driving the fish with the nets, we noticed some large furry animal swimming among the fish.  We had lots of wildlife in the area, so this was likely some kind of large rodent.  I asked the Israelis what it was and they called it something that sounded like Hebrew... a word I was unfamiliar with ... I asked how you say that in English... and they repeated the word.  "Nutria"... I didn't know what that was.  (hey, I was young, cut me some slack).

They made a impromptu decision to capture the Nutria.  It was basically a small Capybara.  A large (size of a dog) rodent with large buck teeth.  An intimidating capture.  We surrounded this fearsome beast with about 15 of us on floating nets.  driving it to the center.  I could already picture one of the bosses, making a coat out of him for his wife.

We tightened and tightened the net.  The Nutria dove under the water... and when we came together and lifted the net... voila!!  nuthin.  Somehow the Nutria had eluded our nets, and now the water had gotten so low (because we spent so much time chasing this damned Nutria,) that we had a very difficult time collecting the rest of the muddied silver carp.

I was tired, badly sunburned 'cause we'd been working in the water barefoot, with swimsuits and no shirts.  We wore sunglasses and a hat, but my nose was burnt, my shoulders were lobster red, and no nutria.

We worked 'till the early evening when we couldn't see anymore, all the fish had been collected into 20 different tanker trucks, which each left at they were filled... on their way to the big city.

We were exhausted... and sat down to an alfresco dinner of baked chicken, and Turkish coffee (called botz - which is Hebrew for "mud"... somehow appropriate) so thick... when you're finished drinking it, there's a layer of coffee grounds on the bottom of the cup (mud) that you spread on a cracker and eat.

What a day, what a day!