The first acquaintance with "fire shrimp" is in the early summer reed pond, the reed pond is in the east of Hujiatan Village, people are used to call it Donggou, it leads directly to the adjacent Jiangjia Village. The green reeds are endless, and the evening wind blows and sways. The world of reeds is not lonely, and there are brothers in its territory who live with it, which we call pupa. The sticks that grow from the puddles look like hot dogs, and we pull them down and take them around and knock around, which is really fun.
Frogs chirp one after another, tiger frogs, golden wire frogs, bullfrogs, big toads, etc. are also regular visitors to this water, and the biggest call is bullfrogs. The mallard and the mallard will also mix a few sounds, but its tone is short and hoarse, far less than the persistent enthusiasm of the frogs. The most noisy residents of the day, the reed birds, are now stinging in the nests deep in the reeds, and they are disdainful of joining the chorus of the two neighbors.
After dinner, I asked three or five friends to go to Donggou to play. Suddenly, I saw flocks of shrimp, shining with a faint light, bouncing in the water. The friends were excited, grabbed them, and examined them carefully. It is one centimeter long, the lines on its back grow from the head to the tip of the tail, the pale red transparent shell and the small dots of light brown, the dense white feet, the light brown tentacles, and the short claws, which can be described as very powerful in its world. Swarms of shrimp emit a white glow on their abdomen. The mischievous partner carefully picked up this and put down the other, they were crystal clear, the little fluorescent beauty was so beautiful, we called it "fire shrimp".
Why do shrimp glow? We went to the biology teacher with doubts, and only then did we know that the shrimp glow was infected with the virus. Caused by vibrio luminescence and excrement from shrimp, vibrio luminescent media provides the medium, a large number of vibrio invade the shrimp body, sick shrimp eat little or no food, tentacles are broken, unresponsive, usually slowly swimming in the shallow reed pond, with light to draw a end to life. The little friends knew the origin, and their hearts were close, and I sighed that this little life could not adapt to the changes in the ecological environment.
Some shrimp glow is not because of illness, like the Taihu Lake "biji white shrimp" itself has high phosphorus content, is a freshwater black shell shrimp, in the dark light environment will change color, will not affect people to eat. There is also a kind of shrimp in the deep sea that also emits a green light, which releases fluorescent organic material outside the body to interfere with potential predators, which is a camouflage for instinctive survival.
A few decades have passed, the reed pond of childhood has become a fish pond, the clear water and the "green gallery" of the past are gone, and there is no frog chirping in the quiet night. In the middle of summer, in addition to fishing and catching shrimp, we often waded into the reeds to search for wild duck eggs, catch reeds, make reed flutes, and chase and play with ripe sticks. More mischievous children lurked under the water with a reed pipe in their mouths, waiting for the wild duck to swim over the top of his head and reach out violently to catch it. The reeds are high, the reeds are long, and the sound of the reed flute is melodious. Donggou was the happy land of our childhood...
Now Donggou is a large area of lotus ponds, "the lotus leaves are infinitely blue, and the lotus flowers are different from the sun" is a different kind of scenery. In the poem, the grand scene of the white snow of the "Crab Leaf" is no longer there, and watching the fire shrimp has become a luxury.
(Photo by Cao Xinqing)
About author:Hu Wanliang, born in July 1966, is a native of Lijin, Dongying City, Shandong Province. Young children leave home, walk Luxi, dream of the sound of the Yellow River, the year of destiny, and listen to the wind and groan, record life with words, and have leaves without fruit and joy.
