Designed To Dart

Last fall, we boys all went down to the creek to catch some fish for our fish tank. When we arrived at the creek, we saw a small school swimming in a deep pool of water. We took our nets and tried to catch the fish, but they were too fast. After several failed attempts, we decided to move upstream.

We had not gone far when we saw a colorful creature sitting in the bottom of a small cove! We had never seen this kind of fish before in the creek and thought it would be perfect for our fish tank. We took our nets and attempted to catch the pretty fish, but when the net got close, it darted away. We tried and tried, but it was no use. We could not get the net close enough to seize it. We tried all morning but had no luck.

Not many days later, Jonah came up from the creek with a container filled with water, and in the water was the colorful fish! We were so excited that he had caught the fish, because we could now show it to Mom. After she saw it, we looked it up and saw that it was an Iowa Darter!

Etheostoma exile, the Iowa Darter, can grow up to three inches long and spends most of its time hopping along the creek bottoms looking for food. They eat Mayfly larva and other small water bugs. Iowa Darters rarely swim, but when they do, they move super-fast, giving them the name Darter. To get around, the Iowa Darter hops around on their front fins! This is because they don’t have an air bladder like other fish. It is strange to see a fish hop around. You can tell male and female Iowa Darters apart because the males are colorful, and the females are grey.

It is amazing to think how many kinds of fish there are. Genesis 1:20 says, “Then God said, let the waters teem with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the heavens. God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the water swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.”

I am so glad God saw that it was good. If He did not think it was good, it would not be here. But since God saw that it was good, we can look at his creation and see for ourselves that it is incredibly good.

~Samuel