"Beautiful in a disgusting sort of way"

Where did I get this bad attitude toward Koi? For months I have regarded them as invaders and hated them. I freaked out because they were eating the catfish fry this Summer. And really, so what, but I captured and sent at least 15 of them to what I knew were unfit ponds. Now I'm tired of being mad at them. The main excuse behind my plot to eliminate the Koi has been that someone told me they are not edible, and I was maintaining the pose that the pond could be a food source in the event of a national market disrupting catastrophe so I had to get rid of the inedible fish. (Okay so most of the plants are not edible, but they smell good.) Looking at the pond today gives me the feeling that if everything shuts down any time soon, we will be having fresh water and fresh goldfish (and incidentally, the thought of eating one gives me the same feeling as the thought of eating a rat - I compared the thoughts), but for now I'm going to back off. I don't eat meat so much any more anyway and if I'm really reduced to eating something out of the pond, it really won't matter what it is.