Don't Name Them

When we surveyed our pond one spring, we found that out of all our original goldfish, only Rosie was left. The fancy ones, Sully and Margaret, Swishy, Paris, and Face -- a Great Egret had been raiding our front yard and had eaten all our named fish.

A couple friends donated their goldfish to us, and our old crew had had some babies, so we had plenty in the pond once again. Alex turned to me as we watched them and said, "This time, don't name them, please."

I never have named the fish again, either. They are all singly or as a school, "Fish." They come and they go; raccoons and egrets and cats take them as they can, and babies are born, dark and tiny, growing into orange delightful swirls.

This picture is of the podocarpus gracilior that shaded the south side of our house.

Yes. Past tense.

We have a rat (or two) in our attic this year, and after lengthy arguments for months with the pest control company rep, in which I refused to cut this tree down because it shaded so much of the house from the fierce summer sun, I walked down the narrow side "yard" and had a look at where rats might be entering the house, and a closer look at the tree.

Suddenly rats weren't really the focus of my concern. Where two other fern pines (that's the podocarpus) had been planted at the same time off the back patio, the trunks were about six inches in diameter. For whatever reason, this creature's waist was more than sixteen. It was poised and ready to take out the fence, and indeed, had already knocked off a couple roof tiles. Lush and beautiful as it was, rat or no rat, it had to go.

Last night, after the tree guy had given his estimate, I went out and took a pic of the tree, and got a bit teary. I love all my trees very much. This morning, when I walked out onto the street to see the result (the tree cutters arrived at 7:15 am) after it was gone, it was horrible, like Sherman's march to the sea. A desert. A wasteland. A bald-faced side of the house.

The view is now horrible from the inside of the house, too. A big bay window looks out on ... fence. No foliage, no birds playing in the evergreen branches, just boards.

We're leaning towards a few nandina in that area, to make a graceful foliar display year round, but I will always miss this ... Tree.

The Mystery of the Disappearing Fish -- Solved!

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?