Dead Goldfish Aren't So Bad

Normally, I would have been very unhappy to discover two of my goldfish dead in the pond, but the good news is that these two moved into our first "raccoon-proof" pond more than two years ago, after living at least one year in a Portola classroom fish bowl. They survived many fishing attempts by marauding raccoons the past late summers-early falls and seem to have lived out their goldfish lifespans.
Fish 1Fish 2It is possible that the roots of the water irises and mint plants had crowded them out or taken up too much oxygen, but knowing what survivors goldfish can be, I rather doubt it. After taking the plants out yesterday afternoon, there was still at last 15 inches of water space at the bottom, as well as space at the top of the "squarepond". Before deciding to remove the pond
Pulling out the plants in order to drain and remove the container
So now I have an opportunity to "remodel" the pond area again. It's been three years since I built the current configuration; this coming weekend, I'm going to try connecting the two ponds and giving the two koi and the four other goldfish a bigger home. Tom has his doubts that it will work since I'll need to connect the smaller pond to the bigger one with two separate pond liners and a channel under the bridge for the fish to travel between water holes. There is definitely the possibility of creating a big leak or dirt collapse, so wish me luck!This week's configuration

A New Pond Visitor

We were lucky to see this guy before he saw us!
We hope there isn't enough flying room between the bridge and the avocado tree for him to try catching fish in his talons because he is gorgeous and we'd love to see him up close again!

Oh No, Here We Go Again

The three weeks before, during, and after our Chicago vacation (never got around to blogging about our fun trip to a fabulous city, so take a look at our photos that never got edited: Oct. 22-23, Oct. 24, and Oct. 25) brought the return of two very familiar and unwelcome phenomena in these parts - wildfires and fish-eating raccoons! Of course the heartbreak, loss, and danger of the former is on such a higher scale of importance - the latter doesn't compare. The media covered the horrible fires up and down SoCal extensively; I won't mention any more for now. Judging by the darkness of the sky the afternoon the Malibu fire began and the smoke in the air even the night we returned, the fires were horrible. But on a smaller scale, we seem to have lost all but one goldfish to a raccoon who seems to be ignoring our high-pressure water-shooting ScareCrow. It came back again last night - for at least the sixth time in three weeks - I thought it had eaten all the bigger fish, but I saw one survivor this morning!

Another Black (Gold)fish

I thought we had lost the black fish that appeared "out of nowhere" last year, but lately I've been noticing extra movement when I fed our goldfish. (Update: Doah! I very vaguely remember buying three or four "feeder fish" for a dollar and think the black fish was one of those.) I finally saw a black fish last week and yesterday I caught it with the camera, some shots quite by accident since this fish moves so quickly and is so easily camoflaged.