Paris, Swishy, Face, Sully, Margaret -- only two of the fish in this picture are still there, the two all-orange ones on the left, Rosie and Oslo.
The five named, along with Lord Patu disappeared. The first to go were Swishy and Margaret; they disappeared last winter. Why they were gone, we couldn't tell. We never found their fishy bodies.
An acquaintance gave us nine HUGE goldfish to grace our pond; it wasn't long before two of them were killed, and their bodies we did find, but uneaten. That sounds like a cat to me, and I still believe that's what happened to the big fat fish.
But when Paris (the white one) disappeared, I was very puzzled, because Paris was too dumb to even come to the surface for food. Then Lord Patu, who was quite handsome, being half black and half orange, was suddenly gone, too. And the water plants had been knocked over. A raccoon?
The mystery was solved last Sunday as we watched football in the front room, whose front windows overlook the fish pond. Suddenly Alex shouted "Look at the pond!" and we turned to see a Great Egret in our little front yard, stalking the fish.
As we all rose to our feet, the bird saw us through the window and took off, looking as big as a house, snowy white against the blue-green shadows of the eucalyptus.
I guess I can't begrudge the loss of a few 10-cent feeder fish to an egret -- it was more of a tribute to our attempt at making a living habitat than an affront.
I wonder if that's why we didn't have any GPS toads in the pool this year?
2 comments:
The correct nomenclature for this species is actually "big effin egret".
You will, perhaps, recall what the 300-lb. canary eats? I'm fairly certain the big effin egret is approximately 4-6 cm. shorter than the 300-lb. canary, and will place money on their diet being identical.
Especially after my ever-deepening relationship with Molly, a bird that size is welcome to eat any of my possessions it wants, no questions asked. Fish. Cat. Beloved husband. I suppose I'd have to do some self-sacrifice if it went after Lillian, but otherwise my peeplez are on their own.
It was a big damned bird.
Sorry about the fish, hopefully you will get a picture of the "Criminal." Speaking of Criminals I got an image of a local Woodpecker that has been playing hard to get. He's now on my blog.
Terry
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