The "Pond Fishin'" Story

It was an ordinary day. I had just finishing cleaning out our man-made pond on the bank behind our house. I occasionally have to clean it out because the fish tended to dirty the water over a period of weeks and you cannot see them as well as we like. The fish we have were purchased three years ago as “feeder” fish. This means they were meant to be used to feed other animals. You can buy 25 “feeder” fish for about $3.00 and hope that maybe a dozen of them grow into mature goldfish instead of spending $3.00 on each mature fish and having most of them die within a month or two. The “feeders” we had purchased a few years ago are a variety of colors and now are about four to five inches long. Eleven have survived over the years and fill our small pond. Some of the original 25 died by getting caught in the filtration system, being eaten by the other fish or by freezing in the winter when the pond freezes partially over. The pond is now nice and clean and the water lilies give the fish some protection from the hot sun. The waterfall we installed last year helps aerate the water. You can now really see our fish and enjoy them better. Carol suggested we might want to buy a frog or maybe a few tadpoles to the pond. Sounds great! Off we go to That Fish Place which is a pet store about five miles from our house. We find a few tadpoles and make the purchase and decide to stop on the way home for something to eat. We meet some friends and spend more time than we anticipated at the restaurant, but we were sure the tadpoles would survive since they package them with compressed air in the bag. OK, time to head home. We pull into the driveway about three hours after we had left and head towards the pond to show our new friends their home. We are sure they will enjoy our pond as much as we do. I climb up to the pond and am about ready to release the tadpoles when I discover something very strange! “What happened to our fish?” I yell to Carol. “I hope you put enough chlorine drops in the water and waited long enough before you put the fish back in the water after cleaning it,” she responded. “That’s not the problem, I said. There aren’t any fish in the pond at all!!” How can that be? WELL IT BE!! The tadpoles were deposited into an empty pond while we tried to figure what happened. We had no clue. A few days later we were coming back from a neighborhood walk and checked to see if our mail had arrived. In the mailbox was a photo someone had placed there (see accompanying photo). On the back read: “You expecting the stork? There’s one on your roof!” There on the roof was the answer to our question of what happened to our fish. A four foot tall Heron was peering down into the pond to see if he saw anymore brightly colored fish for supper. He had gone pond fishin’ and consumed all eleven fish. I sure hope he enjoyed them as much as we had. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Click on the pix for better view of the heron on the roof.