General Chat

Bob. Snork.


Deb -- I don't think they have raccoons over there!

Watch out for the hot tub if you have baby raccoons. I had one of those small deep inflatable swimming pools up a few years ago. It never entered my head that the baby raccoons would get up on the edge to launder their food. (Actually, the 'washing' has to do with feeling the food; the washing is just a side effect.)

One morning I found a baby raccoon drowned in the pool; it hadn't been able to get out when it fell in. Not a nice moment. I had learned to put an upright two-by-four in my rain barrel after finding a drowned squirrel in that, but a pool drowning just hadn't occurred to me (don't know how they got up the side). Secure that lid, or put some timber in the tub!

JEST, a thought........
you dont have any Garden gnomes, with fishing rods nearby?

Bob

Racoons are good at getting fish from ponds. Just a thought.

We had a pair that lifted the lid off the hot tub and washed their grubs/worms in there before they ate them.

Very smart animals :)

Deb

A while back, I used to have fish in my pond..........
Then a stray cat (previous neighbours left it) re-emerged.

Then neighbour told me that she had to take her cat to the vet's to have it's stomach pumped - as the cat was allergic to the fish she had been eating.
When asked how cat had got fish - neighbour informed me she had seen the stray and her cat at my pond. Stray was 'hoiking' fish out and sharing them with her cat!!

Stray cat moved into my house and lived with me for 10 years - I never bothered restocking the pond!

Twern't my cat. Just a nocturnal visitor. I'm afraid this family only has overfed animals. When we take them to the Vet, he just smiles and says, "Here comes the good life."

Unfortunately for my pond fish I have a fishing cat..........when I noticed the first one gone I was really puzzled , then a second went , so I put a net over the pond and bought a nice new biggish Shubunkin ( which has since gone missing ! )..................I seem to have a fair few " tiddlers" in the pond still so I'm just hoping my crafty cat leaves them alone .

If there are any otters around where you live they will have the fish.Last year near us peoples fish were disappearing and then someone got a photo of an otter at their pond!!

Well Aunty ... at least your cat doesn't puke on you ...

;)

I thoroughly agree with all of that. If I type anything else I'm going to get myself into strife.

See nearly did it again!!

OK one more story. Labrador hates cats. Few weeks ago very hungry cat got in through the doggy door and pinched the steak I had thawing out on the sink. We found meat tray in garden. So of course we closed back door for a few weeks. Other morning OH got up to find half frozen chicken on floor in passageway. (Of course it was dead and plucked). OH had very stern words with labrador. I entered the conversation with, "so that was what all he ruckus was about last night, dog chased something out the back door." So cat beaks in, pinches chook off the kitchen bench, dog hears/smells cat, gives chase, cat drops chicken, dog finishes showing cat the door, re-enters house, finds chicken on laundry floor, picks up chicken carries it up the passageway, decides plastic wrapped half frozen chook not worth effort, drops chicken on floor, and gets a serve from OH in the morning. All I could say was, "Dog is too fat to reach the top of the cupboard anyway."

btw, I love Jean's cat relocating fish. Catch and release!

Aunty, Aunty -- mystery of the missing fish, mystery of the missing Fish ...

I was in TTF mode, and assumed it was a surname. ;)

Most TTF posters have keyboards that didn't come equipped with a shift key, an enter key or punctuation keys, you know!

Your question is causing some deep thought. Brain tired.
Missing capital letter, don't tell me you want more of them?

Lucky you came clean, Kitty -- I was about to rat out your cat!

edit - oops -- that was the cat of Marion from Scotland I was thinking of!

http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/boards.asp?wci=thread&tk=1148347&px=1


AuntySherlock -- I wondered whether it was another case of a missing capital letter. ;)

we have 3 fish in our pond that dont belong to us, our eldest cat charlie fetches them from somewhere. they're not yours are they, lol.

jean

Eldrick........at least the culprit might found out!!?

Bob

Cats are also quite good a scooping fish out. Contrary to popular belief, they dont mind water one little bit and are good swimmers when it suits them.

I would say that's more likely thatn a crow or a magpie, although both will help themselves, it would be more likely in shallow water.

If you net the pond, cats can get entangled and drown. Has been known to happen.

OK, That clarifies things a bit. Now let me tell you about crows. Oz type crows. Short story. We were on a camping trip up in the far north of South Australia. One day we left our camp site for a few hours to go fishing. When we returned it was to chaos and a horrible mess, and a small flock of very merry crows where finishing off their afternoon's work.

They had unravelled a whole roll of aluminium foil, a roll of paper towel, eaten a container of dog biscuits, eaten (I kid you not) a packet of soap powder. Also chewed up everything that was moveable in our camping area including all my clothes pegs.

The next afternoon we stayed home and watched while our feathered friends tried the same trick on another camp site about 300 metres away.

That's crows for you!! Put the netting over the pond.

Hi AuntySherlock
The pond is free standing raised above the ground and i do have a couple of crows that come down to dunk stale bread, they leave it in the water and come back when its soft (bright birds)
the water is very clear as i have a 3in1 pump so you see right to the bottom of the pond and i know 2 of the larger comets are missing and the biggest goldfish is also gone they are the ones that are easy to spot.
I've already moved the plant baskets etc already to make sure they weren't hiding or trapped behind not no luck so as ive not seen a heron i think my money is on the crows or the magpies

OK so I did laugh. Really bad thing to do. But in this environment of so many searches I just wondered how we could advise on a search for missing fish. You lot have come up with some really good suggestions. My thoughts are about the same as well.


As you seem fairly certain that the fish have gone I suppose the next step will be to find out how. You would have to drain the whole pond, which would not be very helpful to the fish, in order to do a fish count.

Is your pond fed by a stream or other water source that may provide an avenue for escape. Do you have a neighbourhood cat who likes fish. I would imagine that some species of birds do take fish. You could put a piece of netting over the pond to stop their free lunches.

The other possibility you could consider is that person or persons unknown have visited and helped themselves.

Might have to drag my OH to the garden centre at the weekend to replace them but need to go in to the shed and dig out the netting first