“This is how real men have fun!” yelled The Favorite, laughing crazily as he lunged in the shallow, murky, mucky water, trying to get a grip on an amazingly strong fish the size of a wiener dog.

Our other two younger grandsons, Lamppost Head and The 747, were doing likewise in the small, shallow pool, all that remained of our farm pond after it drained itself at the end of February.

“It’s over here!”

“He’s coming your way!”

“I got it! I lost it!”

It was an hour of River Monsters meets Great American Mud Wrestling meets Funniest Home Videos, and Grandpa was right in there with the boys. My sister Col. Peggy was there, too, flat on her butt after venturing too far from the dry muck up the bank and into the faux-solid muck, an Earth-origin Blob that lures you in and doesn’t want to let you go. She crawled out on hands and knees, continuing her assignment as videotapist and the only one who could call for help.

The action may have been comic, but our mission was serious and noble. We were there to save the koi, a big, beautiful algae-eating fish that improbably survived when the thickest ice we’ve ever seen on our pond caused most of the water to suddenly drain and drop a heavy ice lid on top of the fish, turtles and other creatures therein.

I thought they all would have been pressed into the muck and suffocated, but in the many weeks since then we could see it wasn’t so by the fishly swirls in the mucky gray pool. That there were live fish, we knew from the visits of fish-eating great blue herons, who daily stalked the edges like dour undertakers. The boys swore they had seen flashes of orange, giving us hope that the gentle koi, an algae-eater of the goldfish family, whose members include the carp, was alive and could be caught and moved to a new home. Our pond is spring-fed, so a small stream of fresh water continuously flowed in, but what they ate and how they lived I do not know. All they had was muck.

A week ago Thursday our motley but game crew, reconnoitered the muck pool. The first thing we found was distressing: a large and fairly recent fish skeleton far up the dry bank. But wading into the muck, the boys’ legs were getting bumped by a big, strong fish or fishes. The Favorite wanted to grab fish right then, but we had no container to put the koi in if we did catch it.

Returning Sunday afternoon with Col. Peggy and buckets of fresh water, large plastic totes and plastic fencing, we found a large, dead fish on the bank that looked to me like a carp, but from what was left of its coloration it was hard to tell, and again I feared we might be a day too late.

The 747 and I took either end of the plastic fencing and began slowly (and every movement in thick muck is slow) moving it across the pool to corral our prey. Lamppost Head and The Favorite were designated catchers, but it quickly became evident that there was not one large fish, but many, and soon we had abandoned the corralling idea and were all lunging and grabbing at the creatures swimming around our legs, invisible in the churning gray water.

Lamppost Head came up clutching a monster fish. “That’s a carp!” yelled Col. Peggy to

“Throw it on the bank!” I hollered. It was indeed and obviously a carp, and we had to keep throwing it further up as it tried to flop back to the water.

Soon we were all catching carp, five, six, seven of them, and two nice bass, two big catfish and assorted bluegill. The bass and bluegill we put in a tote, the carp and catfish we left to die on the bank. How they got in our pond we do not know.

Finally someone grabbed a koi, a beautiful orange-pink thing, and then another and another, each more gorgeous than the last, day-glo orange and red and black and white, unreal cartoon fish. Three koi!

Peg and I made a rush run for more fresh water from our rain barrels at the barn. Muck-covered all, we loaded heedlessly into two trucks, with the koi, bass and a bluegill sloshing in totes, and drove the four miles to Magic Mike’s pond, praying they would still be alive when we got there.

I called him en route.

“Mike, remember when I said I’d bring you a koi if we could get it? We’re on our way to you with three!”

When we dumped the containers, the bass were dead and the koi didn’t look so good, but once in the clear water they revived and began slowly touring their new home, swimming in happy formation, giant goldfish in a big, wonderful country pond. It was a glorious sight.

The next day when the boys went to the pond to fetch stuff left behind in the rush, they reported many dead fish floating in the pool, doubtless killed by all the muck we stirred up.

But none of them were koi.