If you were going to play or swim in Lake Minnetonka, you'd want to avoid certain locations of the lake.  Those sites thick with milfoil are not desirable, for example, as the weed can actually entwine your limbs and cause you to drown.
Probably the yuckiest waters of Lake Minnetonka are located in the marina bays where boats float for hours on end until Sunday afternoon or Monday evening when they might be cruising instead of bobbing.
Sunfish and slivers of minnows are often attracted to the coolness of the shade cast by the boats and shoreline trees.  Liver-like leeches live in these shaded waters and the bloodsucking devils like to attach to your skin and other body parts.
The muck of vegetation turned rotten and black is also part of this underwater venue, and it dwells just above the mushy black lake bottom wherein you can easily sink up to your knees - or belly button if you're a heavyweight.
Sometimes you see snapping turtles poking up for air and occasionally northern pike with big teeth, the kind that are related to sharks, and lumpy toads that give you warts, and skinny pink worms that are not fully grown.
Every living fish, bird, and reptile poops in these dense waters by the boats including scads of scavenger seagulls and gaggles of big honking geese.  And there are snakes that slither in and out of these hell-hole waters.
You wouldn't want to enter these dingy dangerous areas of Lake Minnetonka - never, no matter what, not even if your life depended on it because your life wouldn't be worth much if you got chewed up and eaten by those horrid creatures below the surface, some of them probably related to the Loch Ness Monster.
One week ago Tuesday night, after a beautiful sunset voyage and a delicious on-board dinner, we parked our boat in the marina slip as usual, tied it up, and began securing and snapping the tarp. 
I had Allan's keys in my hand as I also bent to pick up my boat bag when suddenly catastrophe struck.  The keys slipped from my hand into the lake - it happened so easily -- into that narrow dark space between the boat and the dock.  The black water swallowed the keys as silently as the black night had swallowed the sunset. 
Keys to vehicles are different today than when I took driver's training in high school.  Today they're like a miniature laptop computer with bells and whistles for activities unrelated to starting your vehicle.  In other words, they seem more important and a bigger deal to lose.
So this bold and brave editor slid into the lake water up to her neck, gripping tightly the edge of the dock to stay afloat, and began to drag her feet and toes through the murky muddy bottom of the lake that seemed to have no bottom.
I hung there with determination, gently bobbing a few feet each in direction along the dock, using my toes as fingers filtering through the muck.  Allan said I'd never find his keys, that it was impossible, that I should get out of the lake and we'd ask Mary Moore or Julianne, our cruise companions that evening who were waiting for us up by the Tahoe, to call one of their kids to pick us up.  If we could get back home to Victoria, we could locate a spare set of keys.
I only had one thought, however:  "Find those keys.  I know they are there.  It is not impossible!"
I prayed to St. Anthony, apparently not hard enough.  Everything was black and the tiny dock light only cast black shadows in my direction.  Strangely enough, everything was calm and quiet, eerily peaceful and still.  I heard me breathing as I directed all my senses to my toes and feet.
Then I remembered that Mary Moore's relationship to St. Anthony is closer than mine and I excitedly shouted to Allan, "Tell Mary to pray to St. Anthony!"  Within sixty seconds, my toes stumbled across an object that was different than the greasy twigs and plastic cup I had already retrieved. 
I carefully grasped the object between my ten toes and slowly lifted them to the surface, using my legs as arms.  Then I bravely let one gripping hand go free of the dock and reached for the object between my feet.  I recognized the keys and slopped them safely up onto the dock and screamed in exaltation, "I found them!  I found them!"
Allan kept saying, "It's a miracle!  It's a miracle!"  This made me laugh because that's usually my line.  After pulling me from the drink, he clutched his keys and didn't bother to rinse them off before sticking them into the ignition of his Tahoe.
Only on the way home did I start thinking about the water I had so quickly slipped into with nary a second thought.  I wonder if I would have done the same thing in broad daylight, when I would have seen just what I was getting
into.
There were no uninvited creatures in my swimsuit when I got home, but there was a bucket of muck stuck under my toenails, enough to consider hydro-ponic gardening.  The warm sudsy bath was wonderful.