Jaws: The Minnowing

The creek at Pebble Hollow was five inches deep on a bravely rainy day and seven inches deep on a braggy sunny one, but to the kids of the neighborhood it might as well have been the Atlantic. It had secrets: crawdad castles under rocks, dragonfly pilots on patrol, a tire from 1987 that everyone pretended was a shipwreck. And now, as the summer baked the grass to crunchy confetti, the creek had something else.

Minnows.

Not a couple. Not a dozen. A school—no, an academy, a university—of spear-nosed micro-torpeados with the collective moral compass of a sandwich-stealing seagull. They glinted like jittery coins and moved with the precision of a marching band directed by caffeine. And they were hungry.

It began on a Tuesday, the kind of day when the sun felt like a dog’s tongue, warm and slobbery. Benny “Bubbles” Alvarez dangled his toes from a flat rock while sipping a juice pouch with all the seriousness of a CEO reading quarterly earnings. The water made that glassy babble sound—the creek’s version of purring. He wriggled his toes. A shadow flickered.

Nip.

Benny yelped, flung his juice, and kicked the water into a meteor shower that soaked his T-shirt.

“What happened?” asked Keisha, whose eyes were vigilant for snakes, mean cousins, and pop quizzes, in that exact order.

“Something bit me!” Benny said. “A piranha. A mini-ranha.”

Junie, who considered herself a scientist because she once made slime that melted through her brother’s action figure, squinted. “That,” she declared, “is a minnow.”

“Min-nows don’t bite,” said Miguel, who had exactly zero qualifications but said it with the authority of an audiobook narrator.

Nip. Nip-nip-nip.

“Well they do now!” Benny hopped on one foot like he’d just invented creek ballet. In the water, the minnows flickered closer, a greedy constellation.

“Back up,” Keisha said, because she had appointed herself lifeguard two summers ago and had never resigned. She blew a whistle she kept on a lanyard that also held two safety pins, a mood ring, and a Lego head for reasons unclear. “Wading area closed!”

“Who closed it?” asked Polly, the smaller half of the twins.

“I did,” Keisha said. “I’m the lifeguard.”

“You’re the selfguard,” Ollie muttered, the taller half of the twins.

They retreated, leaving the creek to sparkle as if nothing sinister had just happened. But rumors are like dandelion fluff—one puff and every yard’s got them. By dinner, the story had swelled. By breakfast, it had bloated. By lunch, the Pebble Hollow PTA was holding an emergency meeting under the pavilion beside the creek, in front of a sign that said PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS OR SWIM THE SQUIRRELS.

“Order,” called Mayor Pam—the unofficial mayor, officially the head of the PTA and a woman who could bake six casseroles while drafting a bylaws amendment. She rapped a metal spoon against a cooler lid. “We must address the reports that the creek has become… carnivorous.”

“It nibbled my child,” said Mrs. Alvarez, putting an arm around Benny. “He’s been walking in circles ever since.”

“That’s unrelated,” Benny whispered, still circling the juice cooler.

Dr. Finley Gill arrived late, roughly sixteen years old and wearing a lab coat he’d borrowed from his dentist uncle. He carried a tackle box labeled SCIENCE and a laminated badge that read ICHTHYOLOGIST-INTERN, which he had printed at home next to a certificate stating he’d completed seven percent of an online course in Advanced Aquatic Situations.

“Folks,” Dr. Gill said, pushing up his safety goggles, “I’ve examined this habitat and gathered preliminary data.” He opened the tackle box and extracted a teal folder, a turkey baster, and a packet of fruit snacks that disappeared into his mouth at alarming speed. “These minnows are… opportunistic omnivores.”

“English,” said Mayor Pam.

“They’ll eat anything,” Dr. Gill said, “from algae to your self-respect. Minnows are not born monsters. But under the right conditions—low water, high traffic, snack-based tourism—they become bold. Hyper-bold. Ultra-bold. Like that marker that bleeds through three pages.”

A chorus of gasps, a flutter of PTA newsletters. Someone dropped a Capri Sun; the creek minnows collectively flinched with delight.

“What do you recommend?” asked Keisha, arms crossed, whistle glinting like a sheriff’s star.

“Close the creek for one week,” Dr. Gill said. “Let the ecosystem reset. Post signs: No Wading, No Splashing, No Dropping Crumbs. And strictly—strictly—no glitter sunscreen.”

“Why?” asked Junie.

Dr. Gill took a deep, tragic breath. “It’s like chumming the water with disco balls.”

There was a groan, a ripple of parent-shaking-heads. Mayor Pam drew herself up. “We do not close the creek during Splash Days. The creek is Pebble Hollow’s beating heart, its shimmering artery, the reason we had a bouncy castle last summer. We’re not going to let a handful of—of micro-fish ruin our season.”

“But—” Dr. Gill began.

“No buts, Dr. Teen,” said Mayor Pam, whose alternate title, as everyone knew, was Duchess of Decisive. “We’ll increase supervision. We’ll post informative posters. We’ll schedule a ribbon-cutting.”

Benny raised his hand. “Can the ribbon be made of beef jerky? Asking for a friend.”

“Denied,” said Mayor Pam, and the meeting adjourned with an explosion of chips and well-meaning handouts.

That afternoon, the creek swelled with kids as if parent optimism were itself a tide. Floaties bobbed. Water guns hissed. A Bluetooth speaker declared, without irony, that everything was awesome. Bubbles Alvarez, toes newly armored in two pairs of socks and a set of sandwich bags, grinned bravely and stepped in.

The minnows arrived like a rumor at recess.

They moved as one, a silver smear—then a glitter at the edge—then a swarm. They swizzled around ankles like animated confetti. They tested. They tasted. They nipped. A thousand tiny zippers opened and closed, curious, relentless.

“Ow!” shouted a kid in a Spider-Man rash guard. “They’re kissing me!”

“They’re tasting you,” corrected Junie, who had read three Wikipedia paragraphs that morning and was now a terror.

Keisha blew her whistle, notes ricocheting off the pavilion roof. “Everyone out of the creek!”

From the pavilion, Mayor Pam waved both arms. “Stay calm!” she yelled, and then, in a lower voice to the PTA treasurer, “Get the ribbon-cutting scissors. For morale.”

Dr. Gill scribbled on a clipboard. “Remarkable,” he muttered, eyes alight with the terrible joy of someone whose grant proposal is writing itself.

The minnows, smelling panic—panic smells like grape juice, incidentally—went full chaos. They bit sandwich bags off Benny’s toes like party magicians pulling scarves from sleeves. They swarmed around knees with the fervor of free samples at the warehouse club. They made a bee-line for glitter sunscreen and created a sparkly fish tornado the color of unicorn regret.

That’s when the legend arrived, walking up the gravel path with the gravity of a lighthouse.

Gus “Gramps” Crandle had a bait shop—the Bait & Wait—downstream and a face like a map of shipwrecks. He wore a bucket hat that had caught more hooks than fish and a vest with forty-seven pockets. He also carried his weapon: a metal strainer the size of a wagon wheel.

He didn’t look at the crowd. He looked at the water. He squinted so hard the minnows blushed.

“I hear you’ve got a problem,” he said, voice like a gravel driveway.

Mayor Pam, adjusting her sash that read BEST PTA PRESIDENT - SELF AWARDED, sniffed. “The situation is under control. Thank you for your concern.”

Gus tapped the strainer with a wooden spoon. Tonk. The minnows rippled.

“Those are creek blinkers,” Gus said. “Devil’s confetti. One takes a nibble, they all take a nibble. One stares at a freckle, they all start thinking that freckle owes them money.”

“We’ve ordered more signage,” said Mayor Pam.

Gus grinned, which looked like a canyon learning to smirk. “Signs are just paper that thinks it’s a fence.”

“We’re going to close the creek,” Keisha said, steel in her whistle.

Mayor Pam folded her arms. “We are going to do no such thing.”

Gus scratched his chin. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take three kids out on my vessel”—he jerked a thumb toward the bank where an inflatable pizza slice bobbed, proudly named The Orka in Sharpie—“and we’ll thin the school. Humanely. Respectfully. With spaghetti strainers and a dream.”

“You can’t catch a thousand minnows with a strainer,” Dr. Gill said.

“You ever catch fog?” asked Gus. “You can’t. But you can make the fog leave.”

“Science agrees with the fog leaving method,” Dr. Gill said hurriedly, because he very much wanted to be on The Orka.

Keisha surveyed her troops. “I’m in,” she said.

“Me too,” said Benny, though he wasn’t certain he wasn’t in a fever dream.

“Bring me,” Junie said. “For research.”

“Fine,” said Mayor Pam, after five seconds of internal debate and a brief, silent prayer to the gods of Volunteer Liability Waivers. “But if anyone is emotionally scarred, we’re having a bake sale.”

---

The Orka pushed into the creek with the ceremonial slowness of a parade float in a hallway. Gus leaned into his oar—singular—while Keisha scanned for perils, Junie set up a laboratory comprised entirely of Dixie cups, and Benny clung to a pool noodle like it was a life raft in a soft drink.

The minnows trailed them at a cautious distance, a silver rumor. They behaved as all schools do when the principal is watching: plausibly innocent.

“Nature is balance,” Dr. Gill narrated from the bank to an audience of PTA members who had formed a fan club against their will. “When balance is disturbed—say, microwave pizza rolls fall into the creek for three consecutive afternoons—the local fauna adapt. Aggressively.”

Gus dipped the strainer. Water hissed through holes. “You don’t fight minnows head-on,” he said. “Minnow to person is a battle of one thousand to one. No, you gotta out-think ‘em. Flank ‘em. Confuse ‘em with metaphors.”

“Like how?” Benny asked, because metaphors did, in fact, confuse him.

Gus didn’t answer. He was staring with the kind of focus usually reserved for defusing bombs or assembling Ikea furniture. He drew something from his vest: a stale hot dog bun and a packet of ketchup. He squeezed a red Rorschach onto the bread.

“Chum?” Junie asked, alarmed and exhilarated.

“Decoy,” said Gus. He tossed the bun upstream.

The minnows pivoted as one, a silver hinge. They exploded toward the bun, forming a whirling dervish that looked, from above, like a glittering doily of doom. The creek vibrated with their frenzied pecking.

“Now?” Keisha asked.

“Now,” said Gus, and plunged the strainer at the edge of the vortex. He lifted. The strainer steamed, water slicing off like crystal hair. Inside, a hundred minnows wriggled, outraged. He tipped them gently into a cooler marked VACATION—LAKE, which he’d filled with creek water and two boiled potatoes for morale.

“We’re gonna need a bigger bucket,” Benny breathed, eyes dinner-plate huge.

“Don’t say that,” Junie said. “It upsets the cosmos.”

They repeated the maneuver: decoy, vortex, scoop, release to Vacation Lake. The kids on the bank cheered as though watching tiny superheroes get gently relocated for trespassing. The middling afternoon sharpened into an adventure, complete with theme music hummed by every mouth: blip… blip-blip… blip-blip-blip…

By the fifth scoop, the minnows had learned. The swarm split, then split again, fractal cunning. Strainers swung, missed. Decoys drifted, ignored. The school gathered in the shadow under the old tire, a silent council of glitter.

“They’re adapting,” whispered Dr. Gill, taking furious notes. “They’re reading Gus’s mind.”

Gus nodded slowly. “Then we do what minnows never expect.”

“Math?” Benny guessed.

“Jazz,” said Gus, and he began to drum the strainer gently against the Orka: tonk-tink-tink, tonk-tink-tink, like rain with a secret.

The minnows pulsed, uncertain.

“See, minnows move on cues,” Gus said, tapping a rhythm that made the creek itself listen. “Sound. Shadow. Snack. You give them a beat they don’t know how to count, and they’ll forget what they were counting.”

The strainer dipped, sliced, rose. Another hundred minnows, mid-funk, found themselves on sabbatical at Vacation Lake. The crowd cheered louder. Mayor Pam dabbed her eyes with a napkin that said LIVE, LAUGH, LIFEGUARD.

But the creek still grimaced with silver. For every hundred that went on a weekend getaway, two hundred arrived from the downstream willow, late to the buffet but unwilling to admit it.

“They’re infinite,” Benny moaned, collapsing against the pizza crust gunwale. “Like laundry.”

Keisha lifted her whistle as if it were Excalibur. “We need a plan they can’t outnumber.”

Junie’s eyes lit. “What if we give them what they want… somewhere else?”

“Can you be more science?” Gus asked.

“Lure,” Junie said, pointing to the pavilion. “Snack Stand.”

Snack Stand was a card table with dreams, operated by Mr. Patel, who believed in lemonade, fairness, and bulk discounts. He also believed children would always tell the truth about exact change. He was wrong, but the belief looked good on him.

They paddled to shore. Junie sprinted to the stand. “Mr. Patel,” she panted, “we need your entire inventory of breadcrumbs. And, if possible, that boom box that only plays the same four songs.”

Mr. Patel knew the look of a child about to do something extremely stupid and incredibly brave. He handed over two loaves of day-old bread and his boom box, which currently contained a karaoke CD labeled BABY SHARK—THE REMIX.

Minutes later, the creek became a parade. Keisha led with the boom box on her shoulder, pulsing the terrible, irresistible beat. Benny and the twins tore bread into a breadcrumb galaxy, broadcasting a crunchy Milky Way downstream. Junie followed with a Tupperware of crushed fish flakes she borrowed from a goldfish named Senator, who would file an official complaint later.

The minnows felt it. Oh, they felt it. They swarmed like shoppers to a two-for-one. They forgot ankles. They forgot the glitter. They forgot the tire’s wise shadow. They became a silver ribbon unraveling toward the willow bend, where the creek widened into a shallow pool with an outlet that led, eventually, to real-deal actual big water.

Gus remained on the Orka, strainer at rest, watching the current. He didn’t smile. He approved, which for Gus was like fireworks.

“Steady,” he called. “Don’t spook ‘em. Keep the groove.”

The kids processed along the bank, pied-pipering. The adults followed, clapping on two and five with powerful suburban energy. Dr. Gill narrated into his phone. “Observation: minnows prefer carbs to calves. Hypothesis: they are tiny raccoons with fins.”

As the silver river reached the willow bend, Keisha turned the boom box up one notch. This had never been done in the history of Baby Shark remixes, and the universe briefly wobbled. The minnows flowed into the pool, churned, and then, as if remembering being wild, drifted toward the outlet and beyond, into the adventures of ponds and culverts and legendarily the municipal fishing lake, where old men still told stories about the one that got away and their wives nodded while making potato salad.

The creek cleared. It exhaled. Water showed skin again, winked at the rocks, swished at the banks like a cat slow-blinking.

Vacation Lake bubbled with the vacationers, who would be chauffeured downstream at dusk in the Orka with the dignity of a bridal procession for sardines.

On the bank, Mayor Pam hugged whoever was nearest, which turned out to be the PTA treasurer and the treasurer’s dog, both of whom squeaked. “We did it!” she cried. “Pebble Hollow, we did it!”

“We temporarily rebalanced the micro-ecosystem via luring and gentle relocation,” Dr. Gill clarified, because joy should be accurate.

Gus finally smiled like a canyon deciding to host a picnic. “Not bad, fog-catchers.”

Benny wiggled his toes in the newly peaceful shallows. A single, tiny minnow, late to the plot, nibbled his second toe with the diligence of a dentist. Benny laughed, a real laugh, the kind that leaves structure in its wake. “It tickles,” he said.

“Let’s post the signs anyway,” Keisha said, because victory must always be laminated. She propped a hand-drawn poster against the pavilion leg: PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS, THE MINNOWS, OR THE EGO OF THE PTA PRESIDENT. Mayor Pam pretended not to see that last part and took a bow.

---

Pebble Hollow returned to normal as only towns do after a weird thing—they took the weird, put a bow on it, and made it a tradition. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony with scissors that did, in fact, briefly touch a Slim Jim. There were commemorative T-shirts printed by a cousin that read I SURVIVED THE MINNOWING (AND ALL I GOT WAS GENTLY EXFOLIATED). The Snack Stand introduced Minnow Mix (croutons, goldfish crackers, and about a thousand disclaimers). Dr. Gill published a research note on a website that accepted research notes and coupons. It was peer-reviewed by two hamsters named Brine and Shrimp.

As for Gus, he came up from the bait shop sometimes and stood on the bank, listening to rhythms no one else could hear. He still carried the strainer, but now it held blueberries for kids who were brave or foolish or both.

One evening, as the sun red-penned the horizon and the creek yawned like a cat after a nap, the kids gathered on the flat rock. Their ankles swung, tan lines like friendship bracelets they forgot to take off.

“Tell the story again,” Polly said.

“Which part?” Gus asked.

“The scary part,” Ollie said. “The part when all we could see was glitter and teeth.”

Gus looked at the water. It looked back, as water does, without blinking. He cleared his throat and began the speech he would be asked to give so often it became a creek prayer.

“Back at Camp River’s Edge, summer of ’79,” he said, “we had tater tots night. They dumped ‘em in the shallow end to cool ‘em down—criminal, I know—and every fish for two miles came to pay respects. Boys, we lost a good tray that night. I still wake up smellin’ ketchup…”

Benny, having heard this monologue enough times to recite it in his sleep, leaned against his friends and watched the minnows that remained, the ones who had chosen to stay in the little creek like some people choose small towns. They nosed the water’s surface, glittered briefly, and darted after tiny, appropriate things: mosquito larvae, drifting bits of algae, the occasional microscopic insult.

Behind them, the pavilion lights winked on. The boom box, retired to honorable civilian life, sat on a shelf at Snack Stand next to a jar of pickles that no one admitted they liked. Mayor Pam announced that the PTA had commissioned a plaque: IN MEMORY OF THE GREAT MINNOW INCIDENT—MAY WE ALWAYS KEEP OUR ANKLES, AND OUR COOL.

Keisha tucked her whistle inside her shirt and let herself wade in, just up to her shins. The creek nibbled at her with small, polite tastes. She nodded. “Balance,” she said. “We keep it until it tips, and then we tip it back.”

Junie wrote that down in her science notebook under a heading that read MINNOWS & METAPHYSICS.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Polly whispered.

“They always can,” Gus said. “That’s nature. That’s people. That’s summer.”

Benny scooted forward until his toes just touched the water and wrinkled them invitingly. “If they do,” he said, “we’ve got Baby Shark and bread crumbs and a strainer the size of destiny.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” asked Miguel.

“We improvise,” said Keisha. “We jazz.”

They sat in the pink-washed quiet, listening to the creek’s laugh. Fireflies stitched green commas into the narrative of evening. Somewhere, a frog tried out a new joke. Somewhere else, a raccoon signed up for Dr. Gill’s newsletter.

Then, from the shadow of the willow, a shape emerged, many-legged, armored, pincer-curious. It clacked across a shallow rock, antennae trembling like radio towers.

Benny swallowed. “Uh… guys?”

Gus peered, strainer lowering like a moon.

Keisha slid her whistle out again, just in case.

Junie’s pencil hovered.

Miguel took a breath you could butter.

The crawdad flexed both claws, raised them high, and the water said, blip-blip-blip…

Benny grinned.

“Sequel,” he said. “Coming soon.”