Are You a Member Yet?

  We need your help!  The CFI hatchery is near capacity.  By becoming a member, you will help CFI establish a capital improvements fund, and directly assist in achieving our goal of saving more of the Southeast's imperiled fish species.

   Annual membership dues are an affordable $25.  We'll send you an official CFI staff T-shirt as a way of saying Thank You!  You will also receive our annual printed newsletter, the first edition of which is scheduled for February, 2008!  And because CFI is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, $15 of your membership dues is tax-deductible.

   Please help us to expand the important work we began two decades ago.  Click on the link below to enroll now!  Please share this newsletter with your friends and colleagues, and encourage them to join us, as well.  Thanks in advance for your continued support!

Yes! I want to sign up as a CFI Member.

(If you choose not to become a member, we understand.  You will continue to receive the e-newsletter unless you unsubscribe.)

Another Way You Can Help

   How often do you use a search engine?  You can earn a penny for CFI every time you search, simply by visiting www.goodsearch.com and selecting CFI in the "My Charity" box.  You can also download a GoodSearch toolbar here: http://www.goodsearch.com/Toolbars.aspx Every time you search, we earn a penny, and every penny helps!

Shared Story

     We ask our readers to share their favorite stories about experiencing nature.

My First Grass Pike

     When I was fourteen I had fifteen aquariums at home made out of 4x4x10 glass batteries. My father said I had to keep them in the old house that was on the farm. There was no electricity so I had to change water every two or three days for the fish I caught out of our creek. It is a good thing the spring was close by when the creek went almost dry in the summer.

   Some friends and I were swimming, actually splashing around in the waist deep water of a nearby creek. I saw a stick that did not look like a stick. I had never seen a stick stay stationary in the water. Very slowly I cupped my hands around it and captured it. I was totally amazed I had found my first northern pike. It was three inches long. I was ecstatic. Alas, I was a bit dismayed when I found out it was really a Grass Pike, but none the less excited. It did not take long for me to clean our creek out of the smallest minnows and I began seining small bluegill out of our neighbor's pond at night to keep it fed.

   The most amazing thing, my father let me move this aquarium to the house and watched with wonderment as I fed this wonderful little fish. The experience led me to becoming a nature photographer/naturalist/interpretative naturalist.
That was many years ago. But it is with fondness that I remember that little fish. Now That I am retired I have six big aquariums all with native fish from our Indiana streams.

Ron Everhart
Indianapolis, Indiana