About ten years, ago we planned to add a room to our house. We decided I would excavate the new foundation area myself to save money. But soon after I completed digging a massive hole adjacent to our house, the Great Depression of 2008 swept over the land like economic pestilence, We cautiously delayed the buildout to save money, leaving us with a big hole in the backyard.
But I wasn’t giving up. I went digging in my scraps pile to see what I could build in that hole for little or no additional costs.
Look Here! Scrap lumber! An old pond liner of thick flexible plastic! A spare pump! Stolen plants from the golf course!
When the mud settled in the backyard of my NW Oregon location, I had built a nifty 7 x 15 pond, almost 4 feet deep, in the old foundation hole. I put in goldfish from my other pond, stuck in cattails and irises and lilies and wapato plants, and my water feature was completed, using only recycled materials.
The goldfish grew fat and visible, and the local heron began grazing in the ponds regularly.
Every spring, the native chorus frogs showed up on the warmed March evenings, to mate and secrete eggs in what I now called the Cattail Pond. I raced the fish and bullfrogs to find the chorus frog eggs first, so I could transfer the eggs to a safe fishless pond for hatching,
But that all changed one troubled August afternoon. It began as the noisy rattle of loose gravel skidding over the pond liner and splashing into the water.
My purebred collie began barking furiously at the back door.
“What is it, Lassie? Did that darned Timmy fall into that dang well again? No? The wall on the goldfish pond is collapsing? Oh No!” I ran outside. /s/
One edge of the pond liner had slipped down a foot already. Dirt and rocks were slowly tumbling over the edge into the pond. A herculean task remained. I would have to lift out 10 cubic yards of mature plants including 9-foot-tall cattails, and dredge up a ton of gravel and mud before I could remove the liner and repair the sides.
Plus, the raccoons had amused themselves for the last decade by nudging bricks into the pond so I had to lift up tons of bricks out of the water too. And I’d have to pump out thousands of gallons of water, and then net 40-odd reluctant fish and move them.
Then along came that snotty reporter with the accent from NPR (National Pond Radio).
“Sir! Sir! The goldfish have convened a panel of inquiry. They contend you employed substandard building materials to cut costs on the pond’s construction at the price of goldfish’s lives.”
“Look at the bright side,” I responded,” my pond project was a great triumphant example of low-cost housing and recycling of used materials that provided valuable habitat for 10 years.”
“What do you saw to the families of the twelve goldfish killed during the rescue efforts?”
“I think it’s premature to jump to conclusions about why those two goldfish died. Those goldfish had arrest records, and we don’t know how they even got into the pond. They actually died in the rescue shelter, not during the rescue mission. We think they probably got into a fight over drugs.
And ten of those goldfish disappeared, and may not be dead. Of course our thoughts and prayers are with their families. We have provided the survivors with alternative housing.”
The NPR reporter butted in,”Speaking of the rescue shelter, we have reports that the emergency housing is inadequate.”
“Ha,” I sneered, “It’s a 33 gallon pond, it’s better than the desktop fishbowls they could be in, or getting flushed down a toilet.”
“The Goldfish Underwater Legal Protectors (GULP) have a study that says a goldfish is supposed to get a gallon of water per inch of length. But your emergency shelter only has one/quarter gallon per inch of fish!”
“GULP are just a bunch of losers. Their report has no evidence of collusion! Oops,” I blurted out.
The goldfish met that evening to discuss the pond failure and the troubling NPR interview.
Big Jim spoke first, in his James Earl Jones voice,”We all heard the awful things the hooman said today. He failed to maintain the other pond that failed, and now he’s crowded some of those rescued fish into our own pond, and the food! It’s like dog kibble.”
Long-finned Camille spoke next,”We should welcome those refugee fish into our pond. Otherwise they’ll get dumped into the temporary pond, and it has iron oxide sheens. Remember all of us gold fish here are brothers and sisters, descended from the “Original 30” goldfish placed in this pond 13 years ago.”
Sharky, a young aggressive fish, spoke next,”There’s a whole other issue! Face the truth we’re just biomass to the hooman. We’ve finally got proof, too. I’ve seen the dossier. The hooman is in collusion to bring in game fish into our very pond!”
The vividly colored Passionella shouted,”This is crisis capitalism; the hooman is taking advantage of the pond wall collapse to pack us in like, well, sardines, and now we’re be at the mercy of the game fish!”
“Mommy I’m scared,” cried a small fish.
“I’m scared too,” the mother fish shouted,”the game fish have teeth and we don’t. We are just placid aquarium fish, we are doomed!”
The goldfishes’ fears were well founded. A month ago, I had seen a ray of sunlight illuminate the vividly colored scales of a pumpkinseed sunfish in a lake’s shallow waters. The fish’s shimmering reds and greens hypnotized me.
Late at night while my unsuspecting wife slept, I’d sneak out of bed and look up dazzling pictures of the sunfish on the internet. There’s one youtube video I watched over and over, that showed the sunfish’s bright colors. My mind was not my own. www.youtube.com/...
I went on the dark internet, and found someone who’d ship me a dozen sunfish for $100 cash, no questions asked. Soon I’d have a whole school of them flitting back and forth, seducing me with their colors.
I swear I planned to keep the sunfish separately. The goldfish would never have to know that I kept other pretty fish in a different pond. I wanted to move all the goldfish out of the Lily pond and into the Cattail pond, and put the sunfish into the Lily Pond.
But then the Cattail pond collapsed. I had to rescue goldfish from the Cattail pond, and put them into the Lily pond and an emergency pond that was little better than a garbage can.
In the middle of all that, the sunfish arrived by midnight courier in an unmarked car. I figured I’d just quietly slip them into the Lily Pond with all of the goldfish, until I could repair the other pond.
But Sharkey the goldfish had other plans,”Here is an actual photo of the hooman releasing gamefish into our pond!”
END OF PART ONE
You’ve been reading The Daily Bucket,
a nature refuge.
We amicably discuss frogs, animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters, and life’s patterns.
Phenology is how we take earth’s pulse.
We discuss what we see in each Bucket.
Each note adds to our understanding. Please comment about your own natural area, and include photos if possible. We love photos!
To have the Daily Bucket in your Activity Stream, visit Backyard Science’s profile page and click on Follow, and join to write a Bucket of your own observations.
Thanks for reading;
Now its your turn--
What have you noted in your area or travels?
Seeing any shrinking ponds? Please post your observations and general location in your comments. I’ll check back by dinnertime.
Be sure to read, recommend and comment in Meteor Blade’s valuable "Spotlight on Green News & Views,” every Saturday at 3pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page.