Killer Koi

golden crest
photo by la femme jen.

It was an early morning in 1973 when my father lost his leg to a killer koi. He was wading the koi ponds of Mr. Ellison’s estate, famed breeder of championship koi, harbringer of designer breeding in that ancient though clandestine field of koi-anetics. My father was the head koi-handler, scattering specially formulated fish pellets into the water, wading among the water lilies when the following events unfolded.

The groundskeepers were setting the sprinklers and trimming the hedges that early fateful morning. According to witness testimony, the estate was alive with birdsong, a light breeze stirred the magnolias, when suddenly an eerie stillness settled over the grounds. One groundskeeper recalled looking up from his work to see my father wading obliviously through the sparkling pools, then look over his left shoulder in the moment before the attack.

The first strike was a single violent pull on his heal, bringing my father bolt upright, like the first tug on a fishing bobber. Then, a single moment of shock and disbelief, followed by a violent thrashing that lifted him off his feet and submerged him in the shallow pool.

The groundscrew cried out, dropping hedgeclippers and pruners to come running to the waters edge. In the roiling water the head groundskeeper recalls seeing the flash of gold, white and black of the killer koi, and the flailing arms of my father. The koi had spun in a twisting motion, like an alligator roll, twisting off my father’s leg at the knee. By reaching out across the water with the handle of a rake, the groundscrew were able to pull my father out of the bloodied water to the safety of shore.

Panic ensued. Ambulence sirens. Crime photographers. A special committee from the American Koi Society (AKS). Although I was only a child, I remember staying at my father’s side throughout the night in the hospital. Perhaps it was because my father knew those fish better than his own childen that he had foreseen one of them rising up to claim his leg someday. From his hospital bed, through the haze of painkillers and delirium I heard him cry out, “Diablo Wasabi! Diablo Wasabi!”

How could I forget the koi of which he spoke? He always paddled at the waters surface with his head and eyes peeking above the water line, watching me, unblinking, the school of fish giving him a wide burth. Have you ever seen the eyes of a koi? Black, lifeless eyes. A doll’s eyes.

Mr. Ellison posted a $10,000 reward to capture the killer koi. A mob converged on the ponds of the estate. Half of the school was obliterated, captured in nets, stunned by underwater explosives, snagged by children with Snoopy fishing poles, and yet Diablo Wasabi eluded them all. Among the crowds of fishermen, ichthyologists, and media hobbled my father, a crutch in one hand and a gaff in the other.

The crowds parted, forming a corrider towards pond. As my father went into the water, the head groundskeeper clutched me to his chest so I would not witness the fight, but I heard the slow even wading of my father suddenly broken with fierce splashing, gasps from the crowd, and then a wet thud on the ground. I turned to see Diablo Wasabi flopping on shore, the sun glinting off the wet scales of gold and black. How small he seemed on the grass, yanked from his element, gills laboring in the open air. My father sat on the grass ten yards away, the bloodied gaff still clutched in one hand while rubbing the stump of his leg with the other. We all watched the killer koi take his last breaths and felt the same dissatisfaction my father must have felt, the futility of one more dead fish, the emptiness of revenge.