Bradley Berlich '27
Staff Editor
A big koi fish found swimming around the fountain in Spies Garden has been relocated. “Learned Fin,” as some students have called him, was moved to Dell Pond at main grounds in October, according to Gregory Streit, the Law School’s Assistant Dean for Building Services. “[It was] the most humane action for the animal” and “standard protocol” for foreign fish, Streit told this reporter over email. “The Law School's fountains are exactly that... fountains. They are not aquariums.”
Streit says he hopes this will be the last time that someone deposits an alien fish into the fountain, but “[he] doubt[s] it will be, unfortunately.” North Grounds maintenance officials suspect that the fish was placed there sometime after April when the fountain received a cleaning. According to law librarian Benjamin Doherty’s 2020 post on the law library blog, fish have previously been kept in the pond, but this ceased as it became too difficult to relocate them for the winter.[1]
Regardless, Learned Fin’s presence was short and sweet. He will be remembered in the hearts of all he touched.
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jqr9gh@virginia.edu
[1] Benjamin Doherty, A Diary of a Lonely Librarian Part 5: Chronicles of Sadness and Strangeness in the Time of COVID-19, Blog of the Arthur J. Morris Law Libr. (May 11, 2020), https://lib.law.virginia.edu/blog/2020/05/11/a-diary-of-a-lonely-librarian-part-5/.