I've always thought it was a cute gardening term to call unplanned plants "volunteers" that just show up out of nowhere. While it is not usual for the same term to be applied to animals, in this case, I don't think "stray" is appropriate either.
Enter Rosie. She is our newest koi (we think!) fish. She was all black, and small, but a little bigger than the biggest mosquitofish that we have in the pond. At first we thought she was a freakishly large one.
As she grew, we could tell that she was indeed not a mosquitofish, her body and fins shaped differently. And we could also see the faintest blush in her cheek area, giving rise to her name. Where did she come from? We heard a theory that fish eggs can be transferred via the addition of water plants to your pond environment. Maybe she was a hanger-on that hatched and thrived.
She quickly grew to two, then three times the size of those small mosquitofish. And the bigger she got, the more distinct her rosy cheeks became. Then, one afternoon she surprised us all by looking like this:
So she is our little volunteer. We welcome her to the family, and hope she enjoys playing one of our favorite games. It goes like this: "Guess what." "What?"
TURTLE BUTT!!
"Ohmigod. You are so lame. Do you really need to ask yourself why I hide from you most of the time??"
"Some dignity, please. That's all I ask."
Sorry, Kooper. To quote my favorite line from Bart Simpson, "I can't promise that I'll try, but I'll try to try." In the meantime, you could lighten up a little. You have such a hard exterior, but I know you are a softy on the inside...
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