Two surprises today...

[Somethin' Fishy]

Two surprises today. One neat, one not so good....

The first - My husband noticed something swimming in our container garden and I figured it would be one of the waterbugs, or maybe a tadpole. Nope. It was a FISH! There must have been eggs on one of the plants I transferred from our pond. All of the rest of the plants came by mail order... Anyway, it was already around 1/2", so it must have been dinning on aquatic swimmers all this time. Guess I'll leave 'em in there until its big enough to survive in the pond.

The second discovery of the day - Sadly, I found a painted turtle floating belly-up in our pond. Poor thing must have fallen in and couldn't climb out.

 

[bagsmom]

A little fun news and a little sad news. Poor turtle! That's a bummer!

 

[j.w]

Happy for your little survivor fish and so sad for the turtle.

 

[Lisak1]

The good and the bad of pond life.

 

[RobAmy]

So any plans if another turtle finds the pond it can get out? Poor little turtle.

 

[JamieB]

Add a floating turtle dock, it gives creatures a place to escape out of the water. There are many creatures which might fall in and not get out, and there are some designed for pools and such for just that purpose.

 

[Somethin' Fishy]

So any plans if another turtle finds the pond it can get out? Poor little turtle.

Actually, I did build in "critter ramps", but apparently this turtle either couldn't find them, or it might have been upside down... I did find it belly-up, so maybe if it tumbled in, landed that way, and then couldn't right itself to swim and crawl out. ?

 

[addy1]

I put in critter ramps after a turtle drowned in my pond. One of the stock tank ponds, have not found another dead one since.

 

[Somethin' Fishy]

Years ago I removed a preformed pond from our yard at our previous home and gave it to my dad, along with several baby goldfish we had. He set it up, mostly above ground, and had problems with chipmunks drowning in it. So he built a dock so they could get out. I had that in mind when I built our ponds here and built in the natural ramps. We haven't had any issues other than this one poor paint turtle, and I haven't ruled out neighborhood prank (long story)....