Surprise from the Sky

Lost meal demolishes windshield

Christine Ortiz, the owner of Oh! Designs Interiors on Stone Street in Cold Spring, was enjoying an average Monday on July 7, but there was nothing average about what happened at 4:15 p.m. as she stepped outside for a walk. 

“I heard a loud crash and thought something had broken, maybe inside the pub” on the corner, she said. 

At that same moment, Michelle Kupper was next door, sitting at her desk at the Philipstown Behavioral Health Hub, when she heard what she described as “a loud pop.” 

Kupper saw Ortiz walk by and joined her. “What in the world happened to my car?” Ortiz asked aloud, as they stared at the Subaru parked in a shared driveway. The rear windshield was shattered.

“My first thought was that a rock had been thrown,” Kupper recalled. “Then I thought maybe the heat made it implode.”

Kupper peered through the broken glass. She spotted something bright orange.

“It’s a fish!” Kupper told Ortiz.

“What do you mean it’s a fish?” Ortiz replied. “Are you kidding me?”

To be precise, it was a koi. But how did it end up in the backseat of her Subaru? 

Talon marks indicated the fish had been taken by a raptor, possibly an eagle or hawk. Ortiz felt it was unlikely to have come from the brackish Hudson River; koi are freshwater fish. “I felt bad; I knew someone was missing a pet,” Ortiz said. “That’s why I didn’t post anything” on social media. 

The mystery of the Stone Street koi would not be solved by Facebook, Instagram or X. It was a story made for the rumor mill and backyard detectives. Neighbors talked to neighbors. Text messages flew around Cold Spring. Residents shook their heads. All but one, that is.

“I heard about it through the grapevine,” Garden Street resident Alex Wilcox Cheek said, adding that Teresa Lagerman, who lives across from Oh! Designs, had told him the tale after Ortiz texted her.

“It sounded like some Garrison Keillor Lake Wobegon story,” Wilcox Cheek said.

It also sounded close to home. “I know exactly whose koi that is,” he thought.

Phil Heffernan, who lives on Church Street and has a koi pond in his backyard, was in California when he received a text from Wilcox Cheek. His pond lies just three blocks due east of where the fish met its end. 

Wilcox Cheek sent along one of Kupper’s photos. Heffernan confirmed it was his koi, and that it had a name: Lucy.  

In 1953, the previous owner of Heffernan’s home had built a 4-foot-deep kiddy pool. In 1990, Heffernan converted it to a fish pond that he keeps well-aerated with “supercharged bubblers” for up to 30 koi. “I always had an aquarium as a kid,” he said.

Flight Risk

July 21, 2024: A fish damaged a Tesla parked in a driveway in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, about a mile from Raritan Bay. After the car alarm went off, the owners investigated and found scales and blood on the broken windshield. They suspected the eagles who had a nest in their backyard.

July 13, 2021: Building inspectors in Neenah, Wisconsin, found one of their sedans in the city lot on Monday morning with the hood caved in and a carp, probably from Lake Winnebago, lying on the asphalt nearby.

Sept. 5, 2016: Lisa Lobree was walking on Labor Day in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia when she was hit in the face by a 5-pound catfish. “I smelled disgusting,” said Lobree, who suffered a cut and had some swelling.

While he has never seen an eagle near the pond, hawks are common and the week before Lucy was taken he saw a large peregrine falcon in the backyard.

Koi prefer the pond bottom, where the water is coolest. But Heffernan said when temperatures surpass 90 degrees — as they did the week Lucy was taken — the water warms and loses oxygen, and the fish surface to gulp air from the atmosphere.

“An eagle would not have dropped that fish; they have claws the size of my hands,” he said, adding that on that hot afternoon the hawk would have seen “a mat of koi” on the pond’s surface. 

“The hawk’s eyes were bigger than his claws and he grabbed the biggest fish he could,” Heffernan said. After flying three blocks, the bird must have lost its grip on Lucy, who weighed 8 to 10 pounds.

“I feel bad for the hawk,” Heffernan said. “He was probably licking his beak.”

Ortiz’s landlord mused that the mob might have been involved, before warbling, “Lucy in the Sky…”. Not to be outdone, a village resident who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal called the incident an act of cod.