You may have noticed no graphics or photos here today. That is because yesterday I had a truly horrible day and I just wanted to update with a few things as quickly as possible.
I awoke yesterday to a slaughter of my pond fish by a raccoon or raccoons. We had probably near 30 fish in the pond and I would guess about half were killed. It looked like a scene out of Beowulf - heads, tails and various fish parts scattered everywhere. Since there were so many parts it gave the appearance of even more fish than it actually was. After burying the dead, we gathered up most of the ones that were still alive (the ones we could catch) and moved them to a new and safer home. I will miss them so much! We seem to still have about 4 left that we couldn't catch and I am hoping that since they were smart enough to keep us from catching them they will also be smart enough to keep away from the raccoons. There are plenty of things/places in the pond that they can hide in. Over the years we have lost a few fishes, like maybe 4 in total to raccoons, not enough that I ever expected to wake up and see something like that. Had Pooka been outside it wouldn't have happened, but she was inside and we were sleeping.
I know that some will think that you can't really be attached to fish, but that isn't true. I cried over the many dead and I cried again when I left the others at their new home and off and on all day. Many of those fish we had for nearly 10 years and I will miss them and going outside and watching them all happily swimming around each day.
5 comments:
Lesley, I am so sorry! What an awful thing to deal with; to see. . . on a much smaller scale, I've had the same thing happen, and I understand. And yes, you can become attached to fish! I have, in the past...
I find people who think that way -- that 'you can't be attached to fish' are usually somewhat cold in nature.
I'm terribly sorry to hear of this. The circle of life does indeed suck.
Much love-
~Deirdre
So sorry to hear about the massacre. Last year, a friend lost all his fish to a raccoon marauder. He was devastated. Nature can be one tough mother sometimes.
I have racoon problems at home too. They are cunning little critters and can be very difficult to deal with. One method that worked was to use a humane cat trap. I put some cat food in it and was able to catch the pairs. I trapped the second one a few weeks later and luckily it didn't remember the trap was "harmful!" I then asked the humane society to come over to release them to the wild. In retrospect, I would have done the release myself because I would have taken the time to drive very far away to release them to prevent them from coming back!
I am very sorry to hear about your fish. There is NOTHING wrong with having feelings for another living thing. I had two moors years ago (20 years) and I still think of them often.
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